Altered Spinal Cord Functional Connectivity Associated with Parkinson's Disease Progression.

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) has traditionally been viewed as an α-synucleinopathy brain pathology. Yet evidence based on postmortem human and animal experimental models indicates that the spinal cord may also be affected.

Objective: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) seems to be a promising candidate to better characterize spinal cord functional organization in PD patients.

Heritability of cervical spinal cord structure.

Objective: Measures of spinal cord structure can be a useful phenotype to track disease severity and development; this observational study measures the hereditability of cervical spinal cord anatomy and its correlates in healthy human beings.

Methods: Twin data from the Human Connectome Project were analyzed with semiautomated spinal cord segmentation, evaluating test-retest reliability and broad-sense heritability with an AE model. Relationships between spinal cord metrics, general physical measures, regional brain structural measures, and motor function were assessed.

Cerebellar Contribution to Motor and Non-motor Functions in Parkinson's Disease: A Meta-Analysis of fMRI Findings.

Parkinson's disease (PD) results in both motor and non-motor symptoms. Traditionally, the underlying mechanism of PD has been linked to neurodegeneration of the basal ganglia. Yet it does not adequately account for the non-motor symptoms of the disease, suggesting that other brain regions may be involved.

Brain changes after spinal cord injury, a quantitative meta-analysis and review.

Spinal Cord Injuries (SCI) lead to alterations in brain structure and brain function by direct effects of nerve damage, by secondary mechanisms, and also by longer term injury consequences such as paralysis and neuropathic pain. Here, we review neuroimaging studies of patients with traumatic spinal cord injuries, perform a quantitative meta-analysis of motor and motor imagery studies, summarize structural studies, evidence of cortical reorganization, and provide an overview of diffusion and spectroscopy studies. The meta-analysis showed significantly altered motor cortex, as well as cerebellar and parietal lobe changes, and qualitatively consistent reports of alterations in somatosensory brain structure, cortical reorganization, white matter diffusion and thalamic metabolites.

Responsivity of Periaqueductal Gray Connectivity Is Related to Headache Frequency in Episodic Migraine.

Migraineurs show hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli at various stages throughout the migraine cycle. A number of putative processes have been implicated including a dysfunction in the descending pain modulatory system in which the periaqueductal gray (PAG) is considered to play a crucial role. Recurring migraine attacks could progressively perturb this system, lowering the threshold for future attacks, and contribute to disease chronification.

Atypical anorexia nervosa is not related to brain structural changes in newly diagnosed adolescent patients.

Objective: Patients with atypical anorexia nervosa (AN) have many features overlapping with AN in terms of genetic risk, age of onset, psychopathology and prognosis of outcome, although the weight loss may not be a core factor. While brain structural alterations have been reported in AN, there are currently no data regarding atypical AN patients.

Method: We investigated brain structure through a voxel-based morphometry analysis in 22 adolescent females newly-diagnosed with atypical AN, and 38 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC).

Adolescents newly diagnosed with eating disorders have structural differences in brain regions linked with eating disorder symptoms.

Background: Adults with eating disorders (ED) show brain volume reductions in the frontal, insular, cingulate, and parietal cortices, as well as differences in subcortical regions associated with reward processing. However, little is known about the structural differences in adolescents with behavioural indications of early stage ED.

Aim: This is the first study to investigate structural brain changes in adolescents newly diagnosed with ED compared to healthy controls (HC), and to study whether ED cognitions correlate with structural changes in adolescents with ED of short duration.

Resting-State Brain and the FTO Obesity Risk Allele: Default Mode, Sensorimotor, and Salience Network Connectivity Underlying Different Somatosensory Integration and Reward Processing between Genotypes.

Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the fat mass and obesity associated (FTO) gene are linked to obesity, but how these SNPs influence resting-state neural activation is unknown. Few brain-imaging studies have investigated the influence of obesity-related SNPs on neural activity, and no study has investigated resting-state connectivity patterns. We tested connectivity within three, main resting-state networks: default mode (DMN), sensorimotor (SMN), and salience network (SN) in 30 male participants, grouped based on genotype for the rs9939609 FTO SNP, as well as punishment and reward sensitivity measured by the Behavioral Inhibition (BIS) and Behavioral Activation System (BAS) questionnaires.

An obesity-associated risk allele within the FTO gene affects human brain activity for areas important for emotion, impulse control and reward in response to food images.

Understanding how genetics influences obesity, brain activity and eating behaviour will add important insight for developing strategies for weight-loss treatment, as obesity may stem from different causes and as individual feeding behaviour may depend on genetic differences. To this end, we examined how an obesity risk allele for the FTO gene affects brain activity in response to food images of different caloric content via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Thirty participants homozygous for the rs9939609 single nucleotide polymorphism were shown images of low- or high-calorie food while brain activity was measured via fMRI.

Obsessive-compulsivity and working memory are associated with differential prefrontal cortex and insula activation in adolescents with a recent diagnosis of an eating disorder.

The role of rumination at the beginning of eating disorder (ED) is not well understood. We hypothesised that impulsivity, rumination and restriction could be associated with neural activity in response to food stimuli in young individuals with eating disorders (ED). We measured neural responses with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), tested working memory (WM) and administered the eating disorders examination questionnaire (EDE-Q), Barratt impulsivity scale (BIS-11) and obsessive-compulsive inventory (OCI-R) in 15 adolescent females with eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS) (mean age 15 years) and 20 age-matched healthy control females.