Single-cell dissection of the human brain vasculature.

Despite the importance of the cerebrovasculature in maintaining normal brain physiology and in understanding neurodegeneration and drug delivery to the central nervous system, human cerebrovascular cells remain poorly characterized owing to their sparsity and dispersion. Here we perform single-cell characterization of the human cerebrovasculature using both ex vivo fresh tissue experimental enrichment and post mortem in silico sorting of human cortical tissue samples. We capture 16,681 cerebrovascular nuclei across 11 subtypes, including endothelial cells, mural cells and three distinct subtypes of perivascular fibroblast along the vasculature.

Confirmation of infantile spasms resolution by prolonged outpatient EEGs.

Objective: There is no consensus on the type or duration of the posttreatment EEG needed for assessing treatment response for infantile spasms (IS). We assessed whether outpatient electroencephalograms (EEGs) are sufficient to confirm infantile spasms (IS) treatment response.

Methods: Three-year retrospective review identified new-onset IS patients.

Subependymal giant cell astrocytomas are characterized by mTORC1 hyperactivation, a very low somatic mutation rate, and a unique gene expression profile.

Subependymal giant-cell astrocytomas (SEGAs) are slow-growing brain tumors that are a hallmark feature seen in 5-10% of patients with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC). Though histologically benign, they can cause serious neurologic symptoms, leading to death if untreated. SEGAs consistently show biallelic loss of TSC1 or TSC2.

Drug-Responsive Inhomogeneous Cortical Modulation by Direct Current Stimulation.

Objective: Cathodal direct current stimulation (cDCS) induces long-term depression (LTD)-like reduction of cortical excitability (DCS-LTD), which has been tested in the treatment of epilepsy with modest effects. In part, this may be due to variable cortical neuron orientation relative to the electric field. We tested, in vivo and in vitro, whether DCS-LTD occurs throughout the cortical thickness, and if not, then whether drug-DCS pairing can enhance the uniformity of the cortical response and the cDCS antiepileptic effect.