Brain neurovascular coupling in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: Correlations with disease progression and cognitive impairment.

Background And Purpose: 'Neurovascular coupling' (NVC) alterations, assessing the interplay between local cerebral perfusion and neural activity within a given brain region or network, may reflect neurovascular unit impairment in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The aim was to explore NVC as a correlation between the functional connectivity and cerebral blood flow within the large-scale resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging brain networks in a sample of ALS patients compared to healthy controls (HCs).

Methods: Forty-eight ALS patients (30 males; mean age 60.

Functional Connectome Controllability in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment after Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex.

: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has shown therapeutic effects in neurological patients by inducing neural plasticity. In this pilot study, we analyzed the modifying effects of high-frequency (HF-)rTMS applied to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) using an advanced approach of functional connectome analysis based on network control theory (NCT). : Using local-to-global functional parcellation, average and modal controllability (AC/MC) were estimated for DLPFC nodes of prefrontal-lateral control networks (R/LH_Cont_PFCl_3/4) from a resting-state fMRI series acquired at three time points (T0 = baseline, T1 = T0 + 4 weeks, T2 = T1 + 20 weeks) in MCI patients receiving regular daily sessions of 10 Hz HF-rTMS ( = 10, 68.

Reliability of quantitative magnetic susceptibility imaging metrics for cerebral cortex and major subcortical structures.

Background And Purpose: Susceptibility estimates derived from quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) images for the cerebral cortex and major subcortical structures are variably reported in brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, as average of all ( ), absolute ( ), or positive- ( ) and negative-only ( ) susceptibility values using a region of interest (ROI) approach. This pilot study presents a reliability analysis of currently used ROI-QSM metrics and an alternative ROI-based approach to obtain voxel-weighted ROI-QSM metrics ( and ).

Methods: Ten healthy subjects underwent repeated (test-retest) 3-dimensional multi-echo gradient-echo (3DMEGE) 3 Tesla MRI measurements.

Accuracy of EMG linear envelope in identifying the peak of muscular activity during walking.

Background: The linear-envelope peak (LEP) of surface EMG signal is widely used in gait analysis to characterize muscular activity, especially in clinics.

Research Question: This study is designed to evaluate LEP accuracy in identifying muscular activation and assessing activation timing during walking.

Methods: Surface EMG signals from gastrocnemius lateralis (GL) and tibialis anterior (TA) were analyzed in 100 strides per subject (31 healthy subjects) during ground walking.