Publications by authors named "Maria E Caligiuri"

Article Synopsis
  • Pediatric-onset Huntington's disease (POHD) shows different symptoms than adult-onset HD (AOHD), primarily presenting with movement disorders like rigidity instead of the chorea seen in AOHD.
  • Researchers sought to find specific biomarkers related to the pathophysiology of POHD by using advanced imaging techniques and comprehensive clinical assessments.
  • Results indicated that POHD is characterized by more severe striatal volume loss and significant alterations in glucose metabolism across various brain regions compared to AOHD, reinforcing the idea that POHD is a distinct condition with unique biological traits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

For every patient, the MR safety evaluation should include the assessment of risks in three key areas, each corresponding to a specific hazard posed by the electromagnetic fields generated by the MR scanner: ferromagnetic attraction and displacement by the static field; stimulation, acoustic noise, and device interaction by the gradient fields; and bulk and focal heating by the radiofrequency field. MR safety guidelines and procedures are typically designed around the "average" patient: adult, responsive, and of typical habitus. For this type of patient, we can safely expect that a detailed history can identify metallic objects inside and outside the body, verbal contact during the scan can detect signs of discomfort from heating or acoustic noise, and safety calculations performed by the scanner can prevent hyperthermia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied brain activity in people with Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (MTLE) and healthy people.
  • They found that the brain frequency patterns of MTLE patients were lower compared to healthy controls, especially on the side of the brain where seizures happen.
  • The study suggests that measuring these brain patterns might help understand how well patients are doing, especially when they take medication for their seizures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is commonly associated with mesiotemporal pathology and widespread alterations of grey and white matter structures. Evidence supports a progressive condition although the temporal evolution of TLE is poorly defined. This ENIGMA-Epilepsy study utilized multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to investigate structural alterations in TLE patients across the adult lifespan.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Mild mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) patients may remain untreated for a considerable time after disease onset or achieve seizure control with a single anti-seizures medication (ASM). Thus, they represent an optimal population to investigate whether ASMs might have influence on brain structure. We consecutively enrolled 56 mild MTLE patients (22/56 untreated, 34/56 on-monotherapy) and 58 healthy controls, matched for age and gender.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: The intricate neuroanatomical structure of the cerebellum is of longstanding interest in epilepsy, but has been poorly characterized within the current corticocentric models of this disease. We quantified cross-sectional regional cerebellar lobule volumes using structural magnetic resonance imaging in 1602 adults with epilepsy and 1022 healthy controls across 22 sites from the global ENIGMA-Epilepsy working group.

Methods: A state-of-the-art deep learning-based approach was employed that parcellates the cerebellum into 28 neuroanatomical subregions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Postural instability (PI) is a common disabling symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD), but little is known on its pathophysiological basis.

Objective: In this study, we aimed to identify the brain structures associated with PI in PD patients, using different MRI approaches.

Methods: We consecutively enrolled 142 PD patients and 45 control subjects.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: The intricate neuroanatomical structure of the cerebellum is of longstanding interest in epilepsy, but has been poorly characterized within the current cortico-centric models of this disease. We quantified cross-sectional regional cerebellar lobule volumes using structural MRI in 1,602 adults with epilepsy and 1,022 healthy controls across twenty-two sites from the global ENIGMA-Epilepsy working group.

Methods: A state-of-the-art deep learning-based approach was employed that parcellates the cerebellum into 28 neuroanatomical subregions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Mutations of the voltage-gated sodium channel SCN1A gene (MIM#182389) are among the most clinically relevant epilepsy-related genetic mutations and present variable phenotypes, from the milder genetic epilepsy with febrile seizures plus to Dravet syndrome, a severe developmental and epileptic encephalopathy. Qualitative neuroimaging studies have identified malformations of cortical development in some patients and mild atrophic changes, partially confirmed by quantitative studies. Precise correlations between MRI findings and clinical variables have not been addressed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: There is some debate on the relationship between essential tremor with rest tremor (rET) and the classic ET syndrome, and only few MRI studies compared ET and rET patients. This study aimed to explore structural cortical differences between ET and rET, to improve the knowledge of these tremor syndromes.

Methods: Thirty-three ET patients, 30 rET patients and 45 control subjects (HC) were enrolled.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

One outstanding challenge for machine learning in diagnostic biomedical imaging is algorithm interpretability. A key application is the identification of subtle epileptogenic focal cortical dysplasias (FCDs) from structural MRI. FCDs are difficult to visualize on structural MRI but are often amenable to surgical resection.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Epilepsy is associated with genetic risk factors and cortico-subcortical network alterations, but associations between neurobiological mechanisms and macroscale connectomics remain unclear. This multisite ENIGMA-Epilepsy study examined whole-brain structural covariance networks in patients with epilepsy and related findings to postmortem epilepsy risk gene expression patterns. Brain network analysis included 578 adults with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), 288 adults with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE), and 1328 healthy controls from 18 centres worldwide.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The clinical differential diagnosis between Parkinson's disease (PD) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is often challenging. The description of milder PSP phenotypes strongly resembling PD, such as PSP-Parkinsonism, further increased the diagnostic challenge and the need for reliable neuroimaging biomarkers to enhance the diagnostic certainty. This review aims to summarize the contribution of a relatively simple and widely available imaging technique such as MR planimetry in the differential diagnosis between PD and PSP, focusing on the recent advancements in this field.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • About 10% of patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease have a condition called SWEDD, which shows no signs of dopamine deficits on imaging, challenging the PD diagnosis.
  • The study aimed to compare brain connectivity in patients with SWEDD to healthy controls using advanced imaging techniques like MRI and DAT-SPECT to better understand their brain networks.
  • Results indicated that SWEDD patients had altered connectivity patterns, showing increased and decreased connection strengths in specific brain pathways, highlighting the complexity of this syndrome and its relationship to various tremor disorders.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Recent work has shown that people with common epilepsies have characteristic patterns of cortical thinning, and that these changes may be progressive over time. Leveraging a large multicenter cross-sectional cohort, we investigated whether regional morphometric changes occur in a sequential manner, and whether these changes in people with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy and hippocampal sclerosis (MTLE-HS) correlate with clinical features.

Methods: We extracted regional measures of cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical brain volumes from T1-weighted (T1W) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans collected by the ENIGMA-Epilepsy consortium, comprising 804 people with MTLE-HS and 1625 healthy controls from 25 centers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is mainly a limbic network disorder characterized by unilateral hippocampal issues and has been studied using structural MRI for brain grey matter changes.
  • The study utilized the ENIGMA-Epilepsy dataset to compare grey matter asymmetry and atrophy in TLE patients versus healthy controls, finding distinct patterns: atypical asymmetry showed a temporo-limbic signature, while atrophy appeared diffuse and bilateral.
  • Results indicated that cortical atrophy correlates with factors like disease duration and age at seizure onset, while asymmetry levels did not, suggesting that these two measures capture different but complementary aspects of TLE pathology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: We assessed levels of depression, anxiety, stress, anhedonia, somatization, psychological distress, sleep, and life quality in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) after one year of containment measures started in Italy to stem the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: We consecutively enrolled 51 patients with MTLE, administering an online survey that compared the year before and after the COVID-19 propagation. We analyzed clinical data (e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) shares symptoms with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), making it challenging to differentiate between them using conventional imaging.
  • The study utilized a semi-automated method to analyze diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data from 121 subjects, focusing on the principal diffusion direction (V1) in the corpus callosum to identify specific changes associated with iNPH.
  • Results indicated that V1 distribution in the corpus callosum is a strong biomarker for diagnosing iNPH, as it demonstrated unique alterations compared to AD and PSP, providing better insight into the underlying disease processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the causes of reduced cortical thickness in human epilepsies using brain imaging and gene expression data to understand underlying mechanisms.* -
  • Researchers found higher levels of activated microglia and endothelial cells in areas of reduced cortical thickness, both in imaging studies and post-mortem brain tissue from epilepsy patients.* -
  • Targeted depletion of activated microglia in a mouse model prevented cortical thinning and neuronal loss, suggesting microglia play a crucial role in these changes, potentially offering new approaches for epilepsy treatment beyond seizure control.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Artificial intelligence has recently gained popularity across different medical fields to aid in the detection of diseases based on pathology samples or medical imaging findings. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a key assessment tool for patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The role of machine learning and artificial intelligence to increase detection of brain abnormalities in TLE remains inconclusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF