Publications by authors named "M Kursat Kaptan"
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the spinal cord is relevant for studying sensation, movement, and autonomic function. Preprocessing of spinal cord fMRI data involves segmentation of the spinal cord on gradient-echo echo planar imaging (EPI) images. Current automated segmentation methods do not work well on these data, due to the low spatial resolution, susceptibility artifacts causing distortions and signal drop-out, ghosting, and motion-related artifacts.
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- The spinal cord plays a crucial role in brain-body communication, but traditional noninvasive recording methods in humans face significant challenges.
- Researchers developed a new electrophysiological approach that uses high-density multichannel spinal recordings and advanced spatial-filtering analyses, allowing for detailed timing and sensitivity in spinal cord response assessments.
- This method was further expanded to include simultaneous recordings from peripheral, spinal, and cortical areas, providing evidence that integrative processing starts in the spinal cord, and was applied to study nociceptive responses during pain stimulation, paving the way for better understanding of brain-body interactions in health and disease.
Non-invasive neuroimaging serves as a valuable tool for investigating the mechanisms within the central nervous system (CNS) related to somatosensory and motor processing, emotions, memory, cognition, and other functions. Despite the extensive use of brain imaging, spinal cord imaging has received relatively less attention, regardless of its potential to study peripheral communications with the brain and the descending corticospinal systems. To comprehensively understand the neural mechanisms underlying human sensory and motor functions, particularly in pathological conditions, simultaneous examination of neuronal activity in both the brain and spinal cord becomes imperative.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe application of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to the human spinal cord is still a relatively small field of research and faces many challenges. Here we aimed to probe the limitations of task-based spinal fMRI at 3T by investigating the reliability of spinal cord blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) responses to repeated nociceptive stimulation across two consecutive days in 40 healthy volunteers. We assessed the test-retest reliability of subjective ratings, autonomic responses, and spinal cord BOLD responses to short heat pain stimuli (1s duration) using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) have an increased risk of developing second primary cancers (SPC). The aim of this study is to determine the frequency of SPC in CLL patients and determine the relationship between these cancers and their treatment status, cytogenetic factors, and other risk factors.
Methods: The study was designed as multicenter and retroprospective.