Publications by authors named "Jan Haeckert"
Article Synopsis
- The study examines how Parkinson's disease (PD) medication affects cognitive functioning, psychiatric symptoms, impulsivity, and quality of life in patients with advanced PD who are preparing for deep brain stimulation surgery.
- It compares effects of low versus high dosages of levodopa-equivalent dosage (LED) and the presence or absence of dopamine agonists on neuropsychological performance.
- Results indicate that lower LED correlates with better performance in impulsivity tests and that dopamine agonists can negatively impact verbal learning tasks and increase psychiatric symptoms, suggesting the need for careful consideration before surgery.
Background And Objectives: 18-kDa translocator protein position-emission-tomography (TSPO-PET) imaging emerged for in vivo assessment of neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's disease (AD) research. Sex and obesity effects on TSPO-PET binding have been reported for cognitively normal humans (CN), but such effects have not yet been systematically evaluated in patients with AD. Thus, we aimed to investigate the impact of sex and obesity on the relationship between β-amyloid-accumulation and microglial activation in AD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFβ-amyloid (Aβ) and tau aggregation as well as neuronal injury and atrophy (ATN) are the major hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and biomarkers for these hallmarks have been linked to neuroinflammation. However, the detailed regional associations of these biomarkers with microglial activation in individual patients remain to be elucidated. We investigated a cohort of 55 patients with AD and primary tauopathies and 10 healthy controls that underwent TSPO-, Aβ-, tau-, and perfusion-surrogate-PET, as well as structural MRI.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- - The study investigates how microglial activation, which is linked to neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's disease (AD), relates to the connectivity of brain regions in Aβ-positive early AD patients compared to healthy controls.
- - Utilizing advanced imaging techniques like positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers found that microglial activation was more prominent in functionally connected brain areas in AD patients, correlating with cognitive decline.
- - The findings suggest that, similar to tau pathology, microglial activation spreads along highly interconnected brain pathways, highlighting its potential role in the progression of neurodegeneration in AD.
Physical exercise has been linked to beneficial effects on brain plasticity. One potential key mechanism for this relationship is an exercise-induced increase of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). However, the kinetics of BDNF in athletes during training phase, extreme exercise competition, and recovery period have not been investigated so far.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs variable after effects have been observed following phasic muscle contraction prior to continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS), we here investigated two cTBS protocols (cTBS300 and cTBS600) in 20 healthy participants employing a pre-relaxed muscle condition including visual feedback on idle peripheral surface EMG activity. Furthermore, we assessed corticospinal excitability measures also from a pre-relaxed state to better understand the potential impact of these proposed contributors to TBS. Motor-evoked potential (MEP) magnitude changes were assessed for 30 min.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In this study, we investigate the capacity of two different non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques (anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (anodal tDCS) and high-frequency transcranial random noise stimulation (hf-tRNS)) regarding the relationship between stimulation duration and their efficacy in inducing long-lasting changes in motor cortical excitability.
Methods: Fifteen healthy subjects attended six experimental sessions (90 experiments in total) and underwent both anodal tDCS of 7, 13, and 20 min duration, as well as high-frequency 1mA-tRNS of 7, 13, and 20 min stimulation duration. Sessions were performed in a randomized order and subjects were blinded to the applied methods.