Posterior Surgical Ligation and Cyst Decompression -via Needle Puncture- of a Large Anterior Sacral Pelvic Meningocele Through Posterior Sacral Laminectomy.

The first documented description of an anterior sacral meningocele was Bryant's in 1823. Anterior sacral meningocele patients have constipation as a universal symptom; urinary incontinence is also common. All the symptoms are directly related to the pressure from a pelvic mass on adjacent structures.

The Submandibular Approach: A Descriptive Perspective of the Retropharingeal Corridor to the Craniocervical Junction (Microscopic- vs. Endoscopic-Assisted Dissections).

The craniocervical junction refers to an area from the line separating the middle and lower third of the clivus to the base of the dens (anteriorly) and from the posterior edge of the occipital foramen to the spinous process of C2 (posteriorly). Here, the clival region is a challenging surgical target surrounded by a complex neurovascular architecture. Historically, mainly the complex, and high-risk, transmucosal approaches have been the corridors of choice when targeting this region.

Pediatric Meningiomas: Current Insights on Pathogenesis and Management.

Meningiomas are rare tumors in children, ranging from 0.4 to 4% of intracranial tumors. Differently from their adult counterpart, pediatric meningiomas (PMs) often show peculiar aspects such as the development of tumoral cysts, the involvement of the intraventricular space, and missing attachment to the dura mater.

Single-Step Plasmid Based Reprogramming of Human Dermal Fibroblasts to Induced Neural Stem Cells.

Reprogramming of somatic cells to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and subsequent differentiation opened up the opportunity of deriving cell types in vitro which (like neurons) had a very restricted accessibility in the past. However, cell culture protocols for iPSC reprogramming, neural induction and differentiation tend to be labor and time intensive, costly and commonly depend on viral vector delivery. Single-step reprogramming to induced neural stem cells (iNSC) avoids many of the necessary intermediate steps of the aforementioned method but yields a cell type that proliferates over longer time spans and readily differentiates to mature neurons when required.

Plasmid-Based Generation of Induced Neural Stem Cells from Adult Human Fibroblasts.

Direct reprogramming from somatic to neural cell types has become an alternative to induced pluripotent stem cells. Most protocols employ viral expression systems, posing the risk of random genomic integration. Recent developments led to plasmid-based protocols, lowering this risk.

The Hippo pathway member YAP enhances human neural crest cell fate and migration.

The Hippo/YAP pathway serves as a major integrator of cell surface-mediated signals and regulates key processes during development and tumorigenesis. The neural crest is an embryonic tissue known to respond to multiple environmental cues in order to acquire appropriate cell fate and migration properties. Using multiple in vitro models of human neural development (pluripotent stem cell-derived neural stem cells; LUHMES, NTERA2 and SH-SY5Y cell lines), we investigated the role of Hippo/YAP signaling in neural differentiation and neural crest development.

Striatal cholinergic interneurons in isolated generalized dystonia-rationale and perspectives for stem cell-derived cellular models.

Interneurons comprise a minority of the striatal neuronal population of roughly 5%. However, this heterogeneous population is of particular interest as it fulfills an important relay function in modulating the output of the only type of striatal projection neurons, i.e.