Delayed onset of late movement-related cortical potentials and abnormal response to lorazepam in catatonia.

Catatonia is a psychomotor syndrome with an inability to execute and terminate movements completely, leading consecutively to akinesia and posturing, which both respond almost immediately to benzodiazepines, i.e. gaba-potentiators like lorazepam.

Functional dissociation between medial and lateral prefrontal cortical spatiotemporal activation in negative and positive emotions: a combined fMRI/MEG study.

The orbitofrontal cortex has been cytoarchitectonically and connectionally subdivided into a medial and a lateral part which are assumed to subserve distinct functions in emotional processing. However the exact spatiotemporal mechanisms of negative and positive emotional processing in medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex remain unclear. We therefore investigated spatiotemporal orbitofrontal and prefrontal cortical activation patterns during emotional stimulation in a combined fMRI/MEG study.

Reduced activation and altered laterality in two neuroleptic-naive catatonic patients during a motor task in functional MRI.

Background: Catatonia, a symptom complex with motor, affective and cognitive symptoms seen in a variety of psychotic conditions and with organic disease, was examined using a motor task using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Methods: Two acute catatonic patients and two age- and sex-matched healthy controls performed sequential finger opposition (SFO) after being medicated with 2 mg of lorazepam (i.v.

Impairment in visual-spatial function in catatonia: a neuropsychological investigation.

Catatonia is a psychomotor syndrome with motor and behavioral abnormalities which may be due to alterations in fronto-parietal cortical function. We therefore investigated neuropsychological tasks (attention, executive, visual-spatial, working memory) associated with frontal and parietal cortical function. Thirteen catatonic patients, diagnosed as catatonic according to criteria by Rosebush and Bush, were compared with 13 psychiatric non-catatonic controls (matched with regard to underlying psychiatric diagnosis, age, sex, and medication), and 13 age- and sex-matched healthy controls.

Reduced volume of limbic system-affiliated basal ganglia in mood disorders: preliminary data from a postmortem study.

Volumes of basal ganglia in postmortem brains of 8 patients with mood disorders and 8 control subjects without neuropsychiatric disorder were determined. Morphometry of serial whole-brain sections under the control of postmortem artifacts revealed reduced volumes of the left nucleus accumbens (-32%, P = 0.01), the right and left external pallidum (-20%, P = 0.

Vasomotion, regional cerebral blood flow and intracranial pressure after induced subarachnoid haemorrhage in rats.

The objective of our study was to examine the relation of the intracranial pressure (ICP), cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP), regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF), and vasomotion in the acute phase in rats after having induced subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH). The experiments were carried out on a total of 21 Wistar rats by means of neuroleptanalgesia and controlled mechanical ventilation. In 16 animals SAH was induced according to the method described by Solomon et al.

Pharmacological and electrographic properties of epileptiform activity induced by elevated K+ and lowered Ca2+ and Mg2+ concentration in rat hippocampal slices.

We studied some of the physiological and pharmacological properties of an in vitro model of epileptic seizures induced by elevation of [K+]0 (to 8 mM and 10 mM) in combination with lowering of [Mg2+]0 (to 1.4 mM and 1.6 mM) and [Ca2+]0 (to 0.