Diffusion magnetic resonance spectroscopy captures microglial reactivity related to gut-derived systemic lipopolysaccharide: A preliminary study.

Neuroinflammation is a key component underlying multiple neurological disorders, yet non-invasive and cost-effective assessment of in vivo neuroinflammatory processes in the central nervous system remains challenging. Diffusion weighted magnetic resonance spectroscopy (dMRS) has shown promise in addressing these challenges by measuring diffusivity properties of different neurometabolites, which can reflect cell-specific morphologies. Prior work has demonstrated dMRS utility in capturing microglial reactivity in the context of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) challenges and serious neurological disorders, detected as changes of microglial metabolite diffusivity properties.

Abnormal Cerebrovascular Activity, Perfusion, and Glymphatic Clearance in Lewy Body Diseases.

Cerebrovascular activity is not only crucial to optimal cerebral perfusion, but also plays an important role in the glymphatic clearance of interstitial waste, including α-synuclein. This highlights a need to evaluate how cerebrovascular activity is altered in Lewy body diseases. This review begins by discussing how vascular risk factors and cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction may serve as upstream or direct influences on cerebrovascular activity.

A cautionary tale on the effects of different covariance structures in linear mixed effects modeling of fMRI data.

With the steadily increasing abundance of longitudinal neuroimaging studies with large sample sizes and multiple repeated measures, questions arise regarding the appropriate modeling of variance and covariance. The current study examined the influence of standard classes of variance-covariance structures in linear mixed effects (LME) modeling of fMRI data from patients with pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (pmTBI; N = 181) and healthy controls (N = 162). During two visits, participants performed a cognitive control fMRI paradigm that compared congruent and incongruent stimuli.

Dynamic Functional Connectivity in Pediatric Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

Resting-state fMRI can be used to identify recurrent oscillatory patterns of functional connectivity within the human brain, also known as dynamic brain states. Alterations in dynamic brain states are highly likely to occur following pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (pmTBI) due to the active developmental changes. The current study used resting-state fMRI to investigate dynamic brain states in 200 patients with pmTBI (ages 8-18 years, median = 14 years) at the subacute (∼1-week post-injury) and early chronic (∼ 4 months post-injury) stages, and in 179 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC).

Gut-brain pathogenesis of post-acute COVID-19 neurocognitive symptoms.

Approximately one third of non-hospitalized coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) patients report chronic symptoms after recovering from the acute stage of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Some of the most persistent and common complaints of this post-acute COVID-19 syndrome (PACS) are cognitive in nature, described subjectively as "brain fog" and also objectively measured as deficits in executive function, working memory, attention, and processing speed. The mechanisms of these chronic cognitive sequelae are currently not understood.

Electric field distribution predicts efficacy of accelerated intermittent theta burst stimulation for late-life depression.

Introduction: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a promising intervention for late-life depression (LLD) but may have lower rates of response and remission owing to age-related brain changes. In particular, rTMS induced electric field strength may be attenuated by cortical atrophy in the prefrontal cortex. To identify clinical characteristics and treatment parameters associated with response, we undertook a pilot study of accelerated fMRI-guided intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) to the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in 25 adults aged 50 or greater diagnosed with LLD and qualifying to receive clinical rTMS.

Prospective Study of Gray Matter Atrophy Following Pediatric Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

Background And Objectives: The clinical and physiologic time course for recovery following pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (pmTBI) remains actively debated. The primary objective of the current study was to prospectively examine structural brain changes (cortical thickness and subcortical volumes) and age-at-injury effects. A priori study hypotheses predicted reduced cortical thickness and hippocampal volumes up to 4 months postinjury, which would be inversely associated with age at injury.

Microbiome-gut-brain dysfunction in prodromal and symptomatic Lewy body diseases.

Lewy body diseases, such as Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies, vary in their clinical phenotype but exhibit the same defining pathological feature, α-synuclein aggregation. Microbiome-gut-brain dysfunction may play a role in the initiation or progression of disease processes, though there are multiple potential mechanisms. We discuss the need to evaluate gastrointestinal mechanisms of pathogenesis across Lewy body diseases, as disease mechanisms likely span across diagnostic categories and a 'body first' clinical syndrome may better account for the heterogeneity of clinical presentations across the disorders.

Multicompartmental models and diffusion abnormalities in paediatric mild traumatic brain injury.

The underlying pathophysiology of paediatric mild traumatic brain injury and the time-course for biological recovery remains widely debated, with clinical care principally informed by subjective self-report. Similarly, clinical evidence indicates that adolescence is a risk factor for prolonged recovery, but the impact of age-at-injury on biomarkers has not been determined in large, homogeneous samples. The current study collected diffusion MRI data in consecutively recruited patients (n = 203; 8-18 years old) and age and sex-matched healthy controls (n = 170) in a prospective cohort design.

Test-Retest Reliability of a Semi-Structured Interview to Aid in Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury Diagnosis.

Objective: Retrospective self-report is typically used for diagnosing previous pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI). A new semi-structured interview instrument (New Mexico Assessment of Pediatric TBI; NewMAP TBI) investigated test-retest reliability for TBI characteristics in both the TBI that qualified for study inclusion and for lifetime history of TBI.

Method: One-hundred and eight-four mTBI (aged 8-18), 156 matched healthy controls (HC), and their parents completed the NewMAP TBI within 11 days (subacute; SA) and 4 months (early chronic; EC) of injury, with a subset returning at 1 year (late chronic; LC).

Distant histories of mild traumatic brain injury exacerbate age-related differences in white matter properties.

We examined associations of distant histories of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) with non-linear and linear trajectories of white matter (WM) properties across a wide age range (23-77). Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data obtained from 171 Veterans with histories of clinically diagnosed mTBIs and 115 controls were subjected to tractography, isolating 20 major WM tracts. Non-linear and linear effects of age on each tract's diffusion properties were examined in terms of their interactions with group (mTBI and control).

Specific White Matter Tracts and Diffusion Properties Predict Conversion From Mild Cognitive Impairment to Alzheimer's Disease.

Identifying biomarkers that can assess the risk of developing Alzheimer's Disease (AD) remains a significant challenge. In this study, we investigated the integrity levels of brain white matter in 34 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who later converted to AD and 53 stable MCI patients. We used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and automated fiber quantification to obtain the diffusion properties of 20 major white matter tracts.

Brainstem damage is associated with poorer sleep quality and increased pain in gulf war illness veterans.

Aims: Gulf War Illness (GWI) is manifested as multiple chronic symptoms, including chronic pain, chronic fatigue, sleep problems, neuropsychiatric disorders, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and skin problems. No single target tissue or unifying pathogenic process has been identified that accounts for this variety of symptoms. The brainstem has been suspected to contribute to this multiple symptomatology.

Brainstem atrophy in Gulf War Illness.

Background: Gulf War Illness (GWI) is a condition that affects about 30 % of veterans who served in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. Given its broad symptomatic manifestation, including chronic pain, fatigue, neurological, gastrointestinal, respiratory, and skin problems, it is of interest to examine whether GWI is associated with changes in the brain. Existing neuroimaging studies, however, have been limited by small sample sizes, inconsistent GWI diagnosis criteria, and potential comorbidity confounds.

Diffusion tensor tractography of brainstem fibers and its application in pain.

Evaluation of brainstem pathways with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and tractography may provide insights into pathophysiologies associated with dysfunction of key brainstem circuits. However, identification of these tracts has been elusive, with relatively few in vivo human studies to date. In this paper we proposed an automated approach for reconstructing nine brainstem fiber trajectories of pathways that might be involved in pain modulation.

White Matter Asymmetry: A Reflection of Pathology in Traumatic Brain Injury.

Comparisons of white matter (WM) fractional anisotropy (FA) values between mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) patients and controls have revealed inconsistencies in the directions of the resulting FA changes. To address these discrepancies, we examined hemispheric FA symmetry levels across WM tracts in 150 mTBI patients relative to 96 military controls. Automated fiber quantification was used to extract 18 WM tracts with 100 FA values, which were used to compute correlation strengths between the nine bilateral tract pairs.

Fronto-Parietal gray matter and white matter efficiency differentially predict intelligence in males and females.

While there are minimal sex differences in overall intelligence, males, on average, have larger total brain volume and corresponding regional brain volumes compared to females, measures that are consistently related to intelligence. Limited research has examined which other brain characteristics may differentially contribute to intelligence in females to facilitate equal performance on intelligence measures. Recent reports of sex differences in the neural characteristics of the brain further highlight the need to differentiate how the structural neural characteristics relate to intellectual ability in males and females.

Aberrant development of post-movement beta rebound in adolescents and young adults with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.

Dependent on maternal (e.g. genetic, age) and exposure (frequency, quantity, and timing) variables, the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on the developing fetus are known to vary widely, producing a broad range of morphological anomalies and neurocognitive deficits in offspring, referred to as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD).

Quantity yields quality when it comes to creativity: a brain and behavioral test of the equal-odds rule.

The creativity research community is in search of a viable cognitive measure providing support for behavioral observations that higher ideational output is often associated with higher creativity (known as the equal-odds rule). One such measure has included divergent thinking: the production of many examples or uses for a common or single object or image. We sought to test the equal-odds rule using a measure of divergent thinking, and applied the consensual assessment technique to determine creative responses as opposed to merely original responses.

Functional brain networks contributing to the Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory of Intelligence.

The refinement of localization of intelligence in the human brain is converging onto a distributed network that broadly conforms to the Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT). While this theory has received support in the neuroimaging literature, no functional magnetic resonance imaging study to date has conducted a whole-brain network-wise examination of the changes during engagement in tasks that are reliable measures of general intelligence (e.g.

Sex differences in the relationship between white matter connectivity and creativity.

Creative cognition emerges from a complex network of interacting brain regions. This study investigated the relationship between the structural organization of the human brain and aspects of creative cognition tapped by divergent thinking tasks. Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) was used to obtain fiber tracts from 83 segmented cortical regions.

Subcortical correlates of individual differences in aptitude.

The study of individual differences encompasses broad constructs including intelligence, creativity, and personality. However, substantially less research is devoted to the study of specific aptitudes in spite of their importance to educational, occupational, and avocational success. We sought to determine subcortical brain structural correlates of several broad aptitudes including Math, Vocabulary, Foresight, Paper Folding, and Inductive Reasoning in a large (N = 107), healthy, young (age range  = 16-29) cohort.