Background: Window-of-opportunity (WOO) studies provide insights into the clinical activity of new drugs in breast cancer.
Methods: AMEERA-4 (NCT04191382) was a WOO study undertaken to compare the pharmacodynamic effects of amcenestrant, a selective estrogen receptor degrader, with those of letrozole in postmenopausal women with newly diagnosed, operable estrogen receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (ER+/HER2-) breast cancer. Women were randomized (1:1:1) to receive amcenestrant 400 mg, amcenestrant 200 mg, or letrozole 2.
Chronic schizophrenia is a very disabling disease and patient's social integration remains difficult. One important aspect is autobiographical memory (AM) as it is impaired in schizophrenia and highly correlated to patient's outcome, since its closely linked to self and identity. Reduced specificity and lack of details are characteristics of patients' AM, but its longitudinal course in schizophrenia remains unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychiatry Res Neuroimaging
September 2023
Schizophrenia is a severe mental disease with significant morphometric reductions in gray matter volume and cortical thickness in a variety of brain regions. However, most studies only focused on the voxel level alterations in specific cerebral regions and ignored the spatial relationship between voxels. In the present study, we used a novel, data-driven technique-nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) to group voxels with similar information into a network, and studied the structural covariance at the network level in schizophrenia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Many patients receiving adjuvant endocrine therapy (ET) for breast cancer experience side effects and reduced quality of life (QoL) and discontinue ET. We sought to describe these issues and develop a prediction model of early discontinuation of ET.
Methods: Among patients with hormone receptor-positive and HER2-negative stage I-III breast cancer of the Cancer Toxicities cohort (NCT01993498) who were prescribed adjuvant ET between 2012 and 2017, upon stratification by menopausal status, we evaluated adjuvant ET patterns including treatment change and patient-reported discontinuation and ET-associated toxicities and impact on QoL.
Background: Neurological soft signs (NSS) are often reported in patients with schizophrenia and may vary with psychopathological symptoms during the course of disease. Many cross-sectional neuroimaging studies have shown that NSS are associated with disturbed network connectivity in schizophrenia. However, it remains unclear how these associations change over time during the course of disorder.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe exceptional navigational capabilities of migrating birds are based on the perception and integration of a variety of natural orientation cues. The "Wulst" in the forebrain of night-migratory songbirds contains a brain area named "Cluster N", which is involved in processing directional navigational information derived from the Earth´s magnetic field. Cluster N is medially joined by the hippocampal formation, known to retrieve and utilise navigational information.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious studies of autobiographical memory (AM) in schizophrenia yielded a reduction of specificity, richness of details and conscious recollection, which indicate both, quantitative and qualitative AM changes. However, their associations with psychopathological symptoms and neuropsychological deficits were not resolved. Therefore, we sought to investigate AM with respect to psychopathology and neuropsychology in patients with chronic schizophrenia to rule out the influence of different courses of the disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the avian brain, adult neurogenesis has been reported in the telencephalon of several species, but the functional significance of this trait is still ambiguous. Homing pigeons ( f.d.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLearning and memory are linked to dynamic changes at the level of synapses in brain areas that are involved in cognitive tasks. For example, changes in neurotransmitter receptors are prerequisite for tuning signals along local circuits and long-range networks. However, it is still unclear how a series of learning events promotes plasticity within the system of neurotransmitter receptors and their subunits to shape information processing at the neuronal level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurological soft signs (NSS) are a common feature of severe psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia but are also prevalent in organic brain diseases like HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) or Alzheimer's disease. While distinct associations between NSS, neurocognition, and cerebral regions were demonstrated in schizophrenia, these associations still have to be elucidated in HIV. Therefore, we investigated 36 persons with HIV of whom 16 were neurocognitively healthy and 20 were diagnosed with HAND.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAutobiographical memory (AM) changes are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In recent neuroimaging studies, AM changes have been associated with numerous cerebral sites, such as the frontal cortices, the mesial temporal lobe, or the posterior cingulum. Regional glucose uptake in these sites was investigated for underlying subdimensions using factor analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe uptake, transmission and processing of sensory olfactory information is modulated by inhibitory and excitatory receptors in the olfactory system. Previous studies have focused on the function of individual receptors in distinct brain areas, but the receptor architecture of the whole system remains unclear. Here, we analyzed the receptor profiles of the whole olfactory system of adult male mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn rodents, gene-expression, neuronal tuning, connectivity and neurogenesis studies have postulated that the dorsal, the intermediate and the ventral hippocampal formation (HF) are distinct entities. These findings are underpinned by behavioral studies showing a dissociable role of dorsal and ventral HF in learning, memory, stress and emotional processing. However, up to now, the molecular basis of such differences in relation to discrete boundaries is largely unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough the avian pallium seems to lack an organization akin to that of the cerebral cortex, birds exhibit extraordinary cognitive skills that are comparable to those of mammals. We analyzed the fiber architecture of the avian pallium with three-dimensional polarized light imaging and subsequently reconstructed local and associative pallial circuits with tracing techniques. We discovered an iteratively repeated, column-like neuronal circuitry across the layer-like nuclear boundaries of the hyperpallium and the sensory dorsal ventricular ridge.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci
December 2021
Neurological soft signs (NSS) are minor ('soft') neurological abnormalities in sensory and motor performances, which are frequently reported in patients with schizophrenia at any stage of their illness. It has been demonstrated that NSS vary in the clinical course of the disorder: longitudinally NSS decrease in parallel with remission of psychopathological symptoms, an effect which mainly applies to patients with a remitting course. These findings are primarily based on patients with a first episode of the disorder, while the course of NSS in patients with chronic schizophrenia and persisting symptoms is rather unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSubtle abnormalities in sensory integration, motor coordination and sequencing of complex motor acts or neurological soft signs (NSS) are characteristic phenomena in patients with schizophrenia at any stage of the illness. Previous MRI studies in schizophrenia found NSS to be associated with cortical, thalamic and cerebellar changes. Since these studies mainly focused on first-episode or recent onset schizophrenia, the cerebral correlates of NSS in chronic schizophrenia remained rather unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe aimed to study the correlations between gray matter volume and the motor subscores of NSS in first-episode psychosis patients with both, whole brain and region of interest analyses. The structural MRIs of 81 first-episode psychosis patients were analyzed by using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) for SPM. NSS were assessed using the Heidelberg scale.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurological soft signs (NSS) are often found in patients with schizophrenia. A wealth of neuroimaging studies have reported that NSS are related to disturbed cortical-subcortical-cerebellar circuitry in schizophrenia. However, the association between NSS and brain network abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia remains unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychiatry Res Neuroimaging
November 2019
Neurological soft signs (NSS), as minor neurological deficits, have been identified in several psychiatric disorders, especially in schizophrenia. However, it's unclear how the neuropathological processes of the disease affect NSS related brain morphological changes and whether it is confounded by the use of medication. As NSS also exist in healthy people, the potential confounding effects of psychopathology or medication will be excluded if NSS are investigated in healthy people.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: To date, single-agent programmed cell death 1 protein 1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) immune checkpoint blockade has shown limited activity in recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer. Combination strategies of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibition with antiangiogenic therapy have the potential for synergistic activity through modulation of the microenvironment and represent a potential therapeutic opportunity in this disease.
Objective: To evaluate the activity of combined nivolumab and bevacizumab in women with relapsed ovarian cancer.
Recent studies indicate that neurological soft signs (NSS) in schizophrenia are associated with generalized cognitive impairments rather than changes in specific neuropsychological domains. However, the majority of studies solely included first-episode patients or patients with a remitting course and did not consider age, course, education or severity of global cognitive deficits as potential confounding variables. Therefore, we examined NSS with respect to cognitive deficits in chronic schizophrenia, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurological soft signs (NSSs), conventionally defined as subtle neurological abnormalities, are frequently found in individuals with schizophrenia. Many neuroimaging studies have also reported that NSSs are associated with grey matter changes in patients with schizophrenia at different stages of the illness. However, these findings may be confounded by the effect of antipsychotic medications, chronicity, and duration of untreated psychosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe avian brain displays a different brain architecture compared to mammals. This has led the first pioneers of comparative neuroanatomy to wrong conclusions about bird brain evolution by assuming that the avian telencephalon is a hypertrophied striatum. Based on growing evidence from divers analysis demonstrating that most of the avian forebrain is pallial in nature, this view has substantially changed during the past decades.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) include asymptomatic neurocognitive impairment (ANI), mild neurocognitive disorder (MND) and HIV-associated dementia. Early recognition of HAND is crucial, and usually requires thorough neuropsychological testing. Neurological soft signs (NSS), i.
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