Structural brain abnormalities in the common epilepsies assessed in a worldwide ENIGMA study.

Progressive functional decline in the epilepsies is largely unexplained. We formed the ENIGMA-Epilepsy consortium to understand factors that influence brain measures in epilepsy, pooling data from 24 research centres in 14 countries across Europe, North and South America, Asia, and Australia. Structural brain measures were extracted from MRI brain scans across 2149 individuals with epilepsy, divided into four epilepsy subgroups including idiopathic generalized epilepsies (n =367), mesial temporal lobe epilepsies with hippocampal sclerosis (MTLE; left, n = 415; right, n = 339), and all other epilepsies in aggregate (n = 1026), and compared to 1727 matched healthy controls.

Cortical correlates of affective syndrome in dementia due to Alzheimer's disease.

Neuropsychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer's disease (AD) are prevalent, however their relationship with patterns of cortical atrophy is not fully known. Objectives To compare cortical atrophy's patterns between AD patients and healthy controls; to verify correlations between neuropsychiatric syndromes and cortical atrophy. Method 33 AD patients were examined by Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI).

Patterns of seizure control in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy with and without hippocampus sclerosis.

Objective: Patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) may present unstable pattern of seizures. We aimed to evaluate the occurrence of relapse-remitting seizures in MTLE with (MTLE-HS) and without (MTLE-NL) hippocampal sclerosis.

Method: We evaluated 172 patients with MTLE-HS (122) or MTLE-NL (50).

Spinal cord damage in Machado-Joseph disease.

Machado-Joseph disease (SCA3) is the most frequent spinocerebellar ataxia worldwide and characterized by remarkable phenotypic heterogeneity. MRI-based studies in SCA3 focused in the cerebellum and connections, but little is known about cord damage in the disease and its clinical relevance. To evaluate the spinal cord damage in SCA3 through quantitative analysis of MRI scans.

Spinal cord atrophy correlates with disease duration and severity in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Our objective was to investigate spinal cord (SC) atrophy in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients, and to determine whether it correlates with clinical parameters. Forty-three patients with ALS (25 males) and 43 age- and gender-matched healthy controls underwent MRI on a 3T scanner. We used T1-weighted 3D images covering the whole brain and the cervical SC to estimate cervical SC area and eccentricity at C2/C3 level using validated software (SpineSeg).

Amygdala enlargement occurs in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy and hippocampal sclerosis with early epilepsy onset.

Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) associated with hippocampal sclerosis (HS) is considered an electroclinical syndrome, and there is a debate whether it is a unique disease or an entity with distinct subtypes. Together with other mesial temporal structures, the amygdala is important in the epileptogenic network of patients with MTLE with HS. During automatic volumetric analysis of mesial structures in a group of 102 patients with MTLE with MRI signs of HS, we observed significant amygdala enlargement in 14 (14%) individuals compared to a group of 79 healthy subjects.

A multimodal evaluation of microstructural white matter damage in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3.

Although white matter damage may play a major role in the pathogenesis of spinocerebellar ataxia 3 (SCA3), available data rely exclusively upon macrostructural analyses. In this setting we designed a study to investigate white matter integrity. We evaluated 38 genetically-confirmed SCA3 patients (mean age, 52.

Spinal cord atrophy correlates with disability in Friedreich's ataxia.

Although Friedreich's ataxia is characterized by spinal cord atrophy, it remains to be investigated the possible correlation of such atrophy with clinical disability and genetic parameters. Thirty-three patients with Friedreich's ataxia and 30 healthy controls underwent MRI on a 3 T scanner. We used T1-weighted 3D images to estimate spinal cord area and eccentricity at C2/C3 level based on a semi-automatic image segmentation protocol.

Coordinated and circumlocutory semantic naming errors are related to anterolateral temporal lobes in mild AD, amnestic mild cognitive impairment, and normal aging.

Naming difficulties are characteristic of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and, to a lesser extent, of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients. The association of naming impairment with anterior temporal lobe (ATL) atrophy in Semantic Dementia (SD) could be a tip of the iceberg effect, in which case the atrophy is a marker of more generalized temporal lobe pathology. Alternatively, it could reflect the existence of a functional gradient within the temporal lobes, wherein more anterior regions provide the basis for greater specificity of representation.

Interactive volume segmentation with differential image foresting transforms.

The absence of object information very often asks for considerable human assistance in medical image segmentation. Many interactive two-dimensional and three-dimensional (3-D) segmentation methods have been proposed, but their response time to user's actions should be considerably reduced to make them viable from the practical point of view. We circumvent this problem in the framework of the image foresting transform (IFT)--a general tool for the design of image operators based on connectivity--by introducing a new algorithm (DIFT) to compute sequences of IFTs in a differential way.