Dysphagia in Huntington's Disease: Correlation with Clinical Features.

Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder characterised by motor impairment, cognitive decline and psychiatric disorders. Dysphagia is a pathologic condition that increases morbidity and mortality of the affected people. Our aim was to evaluate dysphagia in a group of HD patients in view of motor, cognitive and functional decline.

Suggestion and pain in migraine: a study by laser evoked potentials.

Belief and expectation are part of placebo effect. Migraine patients are characterized by a dysfunctional modulation of pain processing, though a clear placebo effect emerges in clinical trials. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of visual and verbal suggestion on subjective pain sensation and cortical responses evoked by CO2 painful laser stimuli in migraine without aura patients vs healthy controls.

Abnormal spinal cord pain processing in Huntington's disease. The role of the diffuse noxious inhibitory control.

Objectives: Our study is aimed to evaluate the spinal cord pain processing in Huntington's disease (HD) by testing both the temporal summation threshold (TST) of the nociceptive withdrawal reflex (NWR) and the functional activity of the diffuse noxious inhibitory control (DNIC) as form of supraspinal control of pain.

Methods: We enrolled 19 HD patients and 17 healthy controls. We measured threshold (Th), Area, TST and related psychophysical pain sensations of the NWR, at baseline and during and after activation of the DNIC by means of cold pressor test (CPT) as heterotopic noxious conditioning stimulation.

Effects of low and high frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of the primary motor cortex on contingent negative variations in normal subjects.

The state of primary motor cortex (M1) excitability is crucial for the processing of voluntary movement. We aimed to test the modulation induced by 1 Hz and 5 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of M1 on both early and late components of the contingent negative variation (CNV) and on the motor reaction in normal subjects. The CNV was evaluated in basal, and after 15 min of real or sham 1 Hz and 5 Hz stimulation of the left motor cortex in 7 right handed volunteers.