Aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) is a devastating subset of stroke. One of the major determinants of outcome is an evolving multifactorial injury occurring in the first 72 hours, known as early brain injury. Reduced nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability and an associated disruption to cerebral perfusion is believed to play an important role in this process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPostictal apnea is thought to be a major cause of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). However, the mechanisms underlying postictal apnea are unknown. To understand causes of postictal apnea, we used a multimodal approach to study brain mechanisms of breathing control in 20 patients (ranging from pediatric to adult) undergoing intracranial electroencephalography for intractable epilepsy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) is a devastating subset of stroke. One of the major determinates of morbidity is the development of delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI). Disruption of the nitric oxide (NO) pathway and consequently the control of cerebral blood flow (CBF), known as cerebral autoregulation, is believed to play a role in its pathophysiology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcute cerebral hypoxia causes rapid calcium shifts leading to neuronal damage and death. Calcium channel antagonists improve outcomes in some clinical conditions, but mechanisms remain unclear. In 18 healthy participants we: (i) quantified with multiparametric MRI the effect of hypoxia on the thalamus, a region particularly sensitive to hypoxia, and on the whole brain in general; (ii) investigated how calcium channel antagonism with the drug nimodipine affects the brain response to hypoxia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPreviously we observed differential activation in individual columns of the periaqueductal grey (PAG) during breathlessness and its conditioned anticipation (Faull et al., 2016b). Here, we have extended this work by determining how the individual columns of the PAG interact with higher cortical centres, both at rest and in the context of breathlessness threat.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe sensation of breathlessness is the most threatening symptom of respiratory disease. The different subdivisions of the midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG) are intricately (and differentially) involved in integrating behavioural responses to threat in animals, while the PAG has previously only been considered as a single entity in human research. Here we investigate how these individual PAG columns are differently involved with respiratory threat.
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