Efficacy and Safety of Sodium Oxybate in Isolated Focal Laryngeal Dystonia: A Phase IIb Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Cross-Over Randomized Clinical Trial.

Objective: To examine the efficacy and safety of sodium oxybate versus placebo in a phase IIb randomized double-blind placebo-controlled 2-period cross-over clinical trial in patients with isolated laryngeal dystonia (LD).

Methods: The study was conducted from January 2018 to December 2021, pausing during the COVID-19 pandemic, at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in 106 patients with alcohol-responsive (EtOH+) and alcohol-non-responsive (EtOH-) LD (53 to receive 1.5g of sodium oxybate first, 53 to receive matching placebo first).

Multimodal collaborative brain-computer interfaces aid human-machine team decision-making in a pandemic scenario.

Critical decisions are made by effective teams that are characterized by individuals who trust each other and know how to best integrate their opinions. Here, we introduce a multimodal brain-computer interface (BCI) to help collaborative teams of humans and an artificial agent achieve more accurate decisions in assessing danger zones during a pandemic scenario.Using high-resolution simultaneous electroencephalography/functional MRI (EEG/fMRI), we first disentangled the neural markers of decision-making confidence and trust and then employed machine-learning to decode these neural signatures for BCI-augmented team decision-making.

Electroconvulsive therapy effects on anhedonia and reward circuitry anatomy: A dimensional structural neuroimaging approach.

Background: Anhedonia is a core symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD) resulting from maladaptive reward processing. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective treatment for patients with MDD. No previous neuroimaging studies have taken a dimensional approach to assess whether ECT-induced volume changes are specifically related to improvements in anhedonia and positive valence emotional constructs.

A separation of innate and learned vocal behaviors defines the symptomatology of spasmodic dysphonia.

Objective: Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary spasms in the laryngeal muscles. It is thought to selectively affect speaking; other vocal behaviors remain intact. However, the patients' own perspective on their symptoms is largely missing, leading to partial understanding of the full spectrum of voice alterations in SD.