Serologic extracellular matrix remodeling markers are related to fibrosis stage and prognosis in a phase 2b trial of simtuzumab in patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis.

Background: Novel noninvasive predictors of disease severity and prognosis in primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) are needed. This study evaluated the ability of extracellular matrix remodeling markers to diagnose fibrosis stage and predict PSC-related fibrosis progression and clinical events.

Methods: Liver histology and serum markers of collagen formation (propeptide of type III collagen [Pro-C3], propeptide of type IV collagen, propeptide of type V collagen), collagen degradation (type III collagen matrix metalloproteinase degradation product and type IV collagen matrix metalloproteinase degradation product), and fibrosis (enhanced liver fibrosis [ELF] score and its components [metalloproteinase-1, type III procollagen, hyaluronic acid]) were assessed in samples from baseline to week 96 in patients with PSC enrolled in a study evaluating simtuzumab (NCT01672853).

Pharmacodynamic effects of filgotinib treatment driving clinical improvement in patients with active psoriatic arthritis enrolled in the EQUATOR trial.

Objectives: The goal of this study was to identify protein and transcriptional biomarkers and pathways associated with baseline disease state, the effect of filgotinib (FIL) treatment on these biomarkers, and to investigate the mechanism of action of FIL on clinical improvement in patients with active psoriatic arthritis (PsA).

Methods: The phase II EQUATOR (NCT03101670) trial evaluated the efficacy of FIL, a Janus kinase 1-preferential inhibitor, in patients with PsA. Peripheral protein and gene expression levels in association with clinical state at baseline and post-treatment were assessed in 121 patients using linear mixed effects models for repeated measures analyses.

Corticospinal Tract Lesion Load Originating From Both Ventral Premotor and Primary Motor Cortices Are Associated With Post-stroke Motor Severity.

Lesion load of the corticospinal tract (CST-LL), a measure of overlap between a stroke lesion and the CST, is one of the strongest predictors of motor outcomes following stroke. CST-LL is typically calculated by using a probabilistic map of the CST originating from the primary motor cortex (M1). However, higher order motor areas also have projections that contribute to the CST and motor control.

Virtual Reality for the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders: A Scoping Review.

Importance: Virtual reality in head-mounted displays (HMD-VR) may be a valuable tool in occupational therapy to address anxiety. Findings from the virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) literature may facilitate translation of HMD-VR to occupational therapy psychosocial practice.

Objective: To explore how HMD-VR has been used to treat anxiety through VRET and could be translated to occupational therapy.

Validating Habitual and Goal-Directed Decision-Making Performance Online in Healthy Older Adults.

Everyday decision-making is supported by a dual-system of control comprised of parallel goal-directed and habitual systems. Over the past decade, the two-stage Markov decision task has become popularized for its ability to dissociate between goal-directed and habitual decision-making. While a handful of studies have implemented decision-making tasks online, only one study has validated the task by comparing in-person and web-based performance on the two-stage task in children and young adults.

A Virtual Reality Muscle-Computer Interface for Neurorehabilitation in Chronic Stroke: A Pilot Study.

Severe impairment of limb movement after stroke can be challenging to address in the chronic stage of stroke (e.g., greater than 6 months post stroke).

Effective Self-Management for Early Career Researchers in the Natural and Life Sciences.

Early career researchers (ECRs) are faced with a range of competing pressures in academia, making self-management key to building a successful career. The Organization for Human Brain Mapping undertook a group effort to gather helpful advice for ECRs in self-management.

A comparison of automated lesion segmentation approaches for chronic stroke T1-weighted MRI data.

Accurate stroke lesion segmentation is a critical step in the neuroimaging processing pipeline for assessing the relationship between poststroke brain structure, function, and behavior. Many multimodal segmentation algorithms have been developed for acute stroke neuroimaging, yet few algorithms are effective with only a single T1-weighted (T1w) anatomical MRI. This is a critical gap because multimodal MRI is not commonly available due to time and cost constraints in the stroke rehabilitation setting.

Pipeline for Analyzing Lesions After Stroke (PALS).

Lesion analyses are critical for drawing insights about stroke injury and recovery, and their importance is underscored by growing efforts to collect and combine stroke neuroimaging data across research sites. However, while there are numerous processing pipelines for neuroimaging data in general, few can be smoothly applied to stroke data due to complications analyzing the lesioned region. As researchers often use their own tools or manual methods for stroke MRI analysis, this could lead to greater errors and difficulty replicating findings over time and across sites.

Laterality of Poststroke Cortical Motor Activity during Action Observation Is Related to Hemispheric Dominance.

Background: Increased activity in the lesioned hemisphere has been related to improved poststroke motor recovery. However, the role of the dominant hemisphere-and its relationship to activity in the lesioned hemisphere-has not been widely explored.

Objective: Here, we examined whether the dominant hemisphere drives the lateralization of brain activity after stroke and whether this changes based on if the lesioned hemisphere is the dominant hemisphere or not.

Shared and distinct contributions of rostrolateral prefrontal cortex to analogical reasoning and episodic memory retrieval.

Rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC) is widely appreciated to support higher cognitive functions, including analogical reasoning and episodic memory retrieval. However, these tasks have typically been studied in isolation, and thus it is unclear whether they involve common or distinct RLPFC mechanisms. Here, we introduce a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task paradigm to compare brain activity during reasoning and memory tasks while holding bottom-up perceptual stimulation and response demands constant.