How to Cure Alzheimer's Disease.

There has been a lot of buzz surrounding new drug discoveries that claim to cure Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, it is crucial to keep in mind that the changes in the brain linked to AD start occurring 20-30 years before the first symptoms arise. By the time symptoms become apparent, many areas of the brain have already been affected.

Machine Learning and Digital Biomarkers Can Detect Early Stages of Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Parkinson's Disease (PD) are devastating conditions that can develop without noticeable symptoms, causing irreversible damage to neurons before any signs become clinically evident. NDs are a major cause of disability and mortality worldwide. Currently, there are no cures or treatments to halt their progression.

Machine Learning and Eye Movements Give Insights into Neurodegenerative Disease Mechanisms.

Humans are a vision-dominated species; what we perceive depends on where we look. Therefore, eye movements (EMs) are essential to our interactions with the environment, and experimental findings show EMs are affected in neurodegenerative disorders (ND). This could be a reason for some cognitive and movement disorders in ND.

Influence of Bilateral Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation on the Lipid Profile in Patients With Parkinson's Disease.

Subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) is a valuable alternative to pharmacotherapy alone in an advanced Parkinson's disease (PD). Given the growing number of patients with STN-DBS, its impact on the comorbidities should be considered. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of bilateral STN-DBS on the lipid profile in patients with PD.

The potential neuromodulatory impact of subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation on Parkinson's disease progression.

Introduction: STN-DBS has been claimed to change progressionsymptomsin animal models of PD, but information is lacking about the possible neuromodulatory role of STN-DBS in humans. The aim of this prospective controlled study was to evaluate the long-term impact of STN-DBS on motor disabilities and cognitive impairment in PD patients in comparison to Best-Medical-Therapy (BMT) and Long-term-Post-Operative (POP) groups.

Material And Methods: Patients were divided into 3 groups: the BMT-group consisted of 20 patients treated only with pharmacotherapy, the DBS-group consisted of 20 PD patients who underwent bilateral STN-DBS (examined pre- and postoperatively) and the POP-group consisted of 14 long-term postoperative patients in median 30 month-time after DBS.

Evaluating reflexive saccades and UDPRS as markers of Deep Brain Stimulation and Best Medical Treatment improvements in Parkinson's disease patients: a prospective controlled study.

Introduction: To date, there has been no clear evidence regarding the evaluation of saccades as a monitoring tool of motor impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD) Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation (STN-DBS) patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the long-term impact of STN-DBS and pharmacological treatment on reflexive saccades' (RS) parameters and UPDRS alterations.

Material And Methods: The DBS group consisted of 20 PD patients who underwent bilateral STN-DBS.

The Neuromodulatory Impact of Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation on Gait and Postural Instability in Parkinson's Disease Patients: A Prospective Case Controlled Study.

Subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) has been an established method in improvement of motor disabilities in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. It has been also claimed to have an impact on balance and gait disorders in PD patients, but the previous results are conflicting. The aim of this prospective controlled study was to evaluate the impact of STN-DBS on balance disorders in PD patients in comparison with Best-Medical-Therapy (BMT) and Long-term-Post-Operative (POP) group.

Multimodal Learning and Intelligent Prediction of Symptom Development in Individual Parkinson's Patients.

We still do not know how the brain and its computations are affected by nerve cell deaths and their compensatory learning processes, as these develop in neurodegenerative diseases (ND). Compensatory learning processes are ND symptoms usually observed at a point when the disease has already affected large parts of the brain. We can register symptoms of ND such as motor and/or mental disorders (dementias) and even provide symptomatic relief, though the structural effects of these are in most cases not yet understood.

Primate area V1: largest response gain for receptive fields in the straight-ahead direction.

Although neuronal responses in behaving monkeys are typically studied while the monkey fixates straight ahead, it is known that eye position modulates responses of visual neurons. The modulation has been found to enhance neuronal responses when the receptive field is placed in the straight-ahead position for neurons receiving input from the peripheral but not the central retina. We studied the effect of eye position on the responses of V1 complex cells receiving input from the central retina (1.

Localization of the subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson disease using multiunit activity.

Background: Refinement of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) coordinates using intraoperative microelectrode recordings (MER) is routinely performed during deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgeries in Parkinson disease (PD). The commonly used criteria for electrophysiological localization of the STN are qualitative. The goal of this study was to validate quantitative STN detection algorithm (QD) derived from the multi-unit activity in a prospective setting.

Optical filtering removes non-homogenous illumination artifacts in optical imaging.

Under constant light illumination, cortical neuronal activity slightly modulates intensity of the light reflected from cortical surface. Optical imaging of the reflected light from the cortex has now become a popular method to obtain cortical functional maps. Since the modulation signal is small, this method is very sensitive to other sources of the light intensity changes.

Activity of common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) in limited spaces: hand movement characteristics.

The increasing popularity of marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus) in anatomical, behavioral, and electrophysiological studies has called for a detailed analysis of their natural behavior within limited spaces. In the present study, the authors analyzed hand movements during horizontal and vertical progressions in a cylinder. The trajectory of each hand covered the entire cylinder floor during horizontal progressions and the entire cylinder wall during vertical progressions.

Basic difference between brain and computer: integration of asynchronous processes implemented as hardware model of the retina.

There exists a common view that the brain acts like a Turing machine: The machine reads information from an infinite tape (sensory data) and, on the basis of the machine's state and information from the tape, an action (decision) is made. The main problem with this model lies in how to synchronize a large number of tapes in an adaptive way so that the machine is able to accomplish tasks such as object classification. We propose that such mechanisms exist already in the eye.

Quantification of three-dimensional exploration in the cylinder test by the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus).

The increasing trend in use of marmoset monkeys in behavioral studies has necessitated a greater understanding of their natural behavior, especially within confined spatial environments. One way to approach this issue is to examine locomotor and exploratory strategies using the cylinder test, as done recently for the rat by Gharbawie et al. [Gharbawie OA, Whishaw PA, Whishaw IQ.

Spatial receptive field organization of macaque V4 neurons.

Subfield analysis of the receptive fields (RFs) of parafoveal V4 complex cells demonstrates directly that most RFs are tiled by overlapping second-order excitatory inputs that for any given V4 cell are predominantly selective to the same preferred values of spatial frequency and orientation. These results extend hierarchical principles of RF organization in the spatial, orientation and spatial frequency domains, first recognized in V1, to an intermediate extrastriate cortex. Spatial interaction studies across subfields demonstrate that the responses of V4 neurons to paired stimuli may either decrease or increase as a function of inter-stimulus distance across the width axis.