Predictors of Pharyngeal Dysphagia in Patients with Parkinson's Disease.

Background: Diagnosis of pharyngeal dysphagia in patients with Parkinson's disease is often difficult as reliable screening methods are lacking so far and clinical examination fails to adequately assess the pharyngeal phase of swallowing.

Objective: To identify clinical predictors indicating the presence of pharyngeal dysphagia in patients at risk.

Methods: We examined pharyngeal dysphagia in a large cohort of patients with Parkinson's disease (n = 200) divided in three clinical subtypes (tremor-dominant (TD), mainly bradykinetic (BK) and early postural instability and gait difficulty PIGD)) by using flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing.

Does higher sampling rate (multiband + SENSE) improve group statistics - An example from social neuroscience block design at 3T.

Multiband (MB) or Simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) acquisition schemes allow the acquisition of MRI signals from more than one spatial coordinate at a time. Commercial availability has brought this technique within the reach of many neuroscientists and psychologists. Most early evaluation of the performance of MB acquisition employed resting state fMRI or the most basic tasks.

Action perception recruits the cerebellum and is impaired in patients with spinocerebellar ataxia.

Our cerebellum has been proposed to generate prediction signals that may help us plan and execute our motor programmes. However, to what extent our cerebellum is also actively involved in perceiving the action of others remains to be elucidated. Using functional MRI, we show here that observing goal-directed hand actions of others bilaterally recruits lobules VI, VIIb and VIIIa in the cerebellar hemispheres.

Subtle Esophageal Motility Alterations in Parkinsonian Syndromes: Synucleinopathies vs. Tauopathies.

Background: Esophageal dysfunction is a frequent phenomenon in Parkinson's disease during all disease stages, but data about esophageal involvement in atypical parkinsonian syndromes as well as possible differences between alpha-synucleinopathies and tauopathies, including causative links to the origin of the dysfunction, are lacking so far.

Objective: To describe esophageal alternation patterns in different parkinsonian syndromes and to look for differences supporting the hypothesis of alpha-synuclein aggregation being linked to gastrointestinal impairment in parkinsonian syndromes.

Methods: We performed an analysis and comparison of esophageal high-resolution manometry examination parameters in 10 patients with Parkinson's disease, 10 patients with multiple system atrophy (both alpha-synucleinopathies), 10 patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (tauopathy), and 10 age-matched controls.

The causal role of the somatosensory cortex in prosocial behaviour.

Witnessing another person's suffering elicits vicarious brain activity in areas that are active when we ourselves are in pain. Whether this activity influences prosocial behavior remains the subject of debate. Here participants witnessed a confederate express pain through a reaction of the swatted hand or through a facial expression, and could decide to reduce that pain by donating money.

Loss of sensory function in patients with idiopathic hand dystonia.

Former studies suggest an additional involvement of the sensory nervous system, beside the involuntary contractions of antagonist muscles, in idiopathic hand dystonia. We studied contact heat-evoked potentials and quantitative sensory testing (QST) in 10 patients suffering from idiopathic hand dystonia and 10 age-matched healthy controls. Cortical potentials recorded from the vertex (Pz) after contact heat stimulation of the volar forearm and the dorsum of the hand at a temperature of 51°C showed significantly reduced A-δ-amplitudes.