Corticospinal Tract Microstructure Correlates With Beta Oscillatory Activity in the Primary Motor Cortex After Stroke.

Background And Purpose: Cortical beta oscillations are reported to serve as robust measures of the integrity of the human motor system. Their alterations after stroke, such as reduced movement-related beta desynchronization in the primary motor cortex, have been repeatedly related to the level of impairment. However, there is only little data whether such measures of brain function might directly relate to structural brain changes after stroke.

Association of Extrapyramidal Tracts' Integrity With Performance in Fine Motor Skills After Stroke.

Background and Purpose- Tractography by diffusion tensor imaging has extended our knowledge on the contribution of damage to different pathways to residual motor function after stroke. Integrity of the corticospinal tract (CST), for example, has been identified to characterize and predict its course. Yet there is only scarce data that allow a judgment on the impact of extrapyramidal pathways between the basal ganglia on motor function poststroke.

Modulating pathological oscillations by rhythmic non-invasive brain stimulation-a therapeutic concept?

A large amount of studies of the last decades revealed an association between human behavior and oscillatory activity in the human brain. Alike, abnormalities of oscillatory activity were related with pathological behavior in many neuropsychiatric disorders, such as in Parkinson's disease (PD) or in schizophrenia (SCZ). As a therapeutic tool, non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) has demonstrated the potential to improve behavioral performance in patients suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders.

Hypoxia and oxygenation induce a metabolic switch between pentose phosphate pathway and glycolysis in glioma stem-like cells.

Fluctuations in oxygen tension during tissue remodeling impose a major metabolic challenge in human tumors. Stem-like tumor cells in glioblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor, possess extraordinary metabolic flexibility, enabling them to initiate growth even under non-permissive conditions. We identified a reciprocal metabolic switch between the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) and glycolysis in glioblastoma stem-like (GS) cells.