Vascular risk factors, white matter hyperintensities and hippocampal volume in normal elderly individuals.

Background/aims: Hippocampal atrophy has been identified as marker for the development of Alzheimer's dementia (AD). To what extent vascular risk factors and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) affect hippocampal volume (HV) in asymptomatic elderly subjects and thus may impact such a predictive capacity is controversial.

Methods: We analysed 287 participants of the Austrian Stroke Prevention Study (mean age 66.

Brain motor system function in a patient with complete spinal cord injury following extensive brain-computer interface training.

Although several features of brain motor function appear to be preserved even in chronic complete SCI, previous functional MRI (fMRI) studies have also identified significant derangements such as a strongly reduced volume of activation, a poor modulation of function and abnormal activation patterns. It might be speculated that extensive motor imagery training may serve to prevent such abnormalities. We here report on a unique patient with a complete traumatic SCI below C5 who learned to elicit electroencephalographic signals beta-bursts in the midline region upon imagination of foot movements.

MTI of white matter hyperintensities.

The severity of tissue changes associated with incidental white matter hyperintensities (WMH) in the elderly cannot be sufficiently determined by conventional MRI. We, therefore, performed a regional analysis of the magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) maps obtained on a 1.5 T scanner from 198 neurologically asymptomatic participants of the Austrian Stroke Prevention Study (mean age 70, age range 52-87 years) in regard to WMH and predefined areas of normal appearing brain tissue.