Preparing Residents to Navigate Neurosurgical Careers in the 21st Century: Implementation of a Yearlong Enhanced Didactics Curriculum.

Background: Neurosurgery residency, known for its rigorous training, must adapt to evolving healthcare demands. Formal education should now encompass areas like quality improvement and patient safety, machine learning, career planning, research infrastructure, grant funding, and socioeconomics. We share our institution's experience with a yearlong enhanced didactics curriculum, complementing our traditional teaching.

Causalgia: a military pain syndrome.

Causalgia, officially known as complex regional pain syndrome type II, is a pain syndrome characterized by severe burning pain, motor and sensory dysfunction, and changes in skin color and temperature sensation distal to an injured peripheral nerve. The pain syndrome primarily tends to affect combat soldiers after they sustain wartime injuries from blasts and gunshots. Here, the authors provide a historical narrative that showcases the critical contributions of military physicians to our understanding of causalgia and to the field of peripheral nerve neurosurgery as a whole.

Safe marginal resection of atypical neurofibromas in neurofibromatosis type 1.

Objective: Patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) are predisposed to visceral neurofibromas, some of which can progress to premalignant atypical neurofibromas (ANFs) and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNSTs). Though subtotal resection of ANF may prevent malignant transformation and thus deaths with no neural complications, local recurrences require reoperation. The aim of this study was to assess the surgical morbidity associated with marginal resection of targeted ANF nodules identified via preoperative serial volumetric MRI and 18F-FDG-PET imaging.

Detection of single mRNAs in individual cells of the auditory system.

Gene expression analysis is essential for understanding the rich repertoire of cellular functions. With the development of sensitive molecular tools such as single-cell RNA sequencing, extensive gene expression data can be obtained and analyzed from various tissues. Single-molecule fluorescence in situ hybridization (smFISH) has emerged as a powerful complementary tool for single-cell genomics studies because of its ability to map and quantify the spatial distributions of single mRNAs at the subcellular level in their native tissue.

Transcript copy number estimation using a mouse whole-genome oligonucleotide microarray.

The ability to quantitatively measure the expression of all genes in a given tissue or cell with a single assay is an exciting promise of gene-expression profiling technology. An in situ-synthesized 60-mer oligonucleotide microarray designed to detect transcripts from all mouse genes was validated, as well as a set of exogenous RNA controls derived from the yeast genome (made freely available without restriction), which allow quantitative estimation of absolute endogenous transcript abundance.