An estimate of the longitudinal pace of aging from a single brain scan predicts dementia conversion, morbidity, and mortality.

To understand how aging affects functional decline and increases disease risk, it is necessary to develop accurate and reliable measures of how fast a person is aging. Epigenetic clocks measure aging but require DNA methylation data, which many studies lack. Using data from the Dunedin Study, we introduce an accurate and reliable measure for the rate of longitudinal aging derived from cross-sectional brain MRI: the Dunedin Pace of Aging Calculated from NeuroImaging or DunedinPACNI.

Media reporting of health interventions in New Zealand: a retrospective analysis.

Aim: To evaluate New Zealand media articles on their coverage of key issues regarding health interventions and whether it is consistent with available evidence.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was carried out of all articles published in five New Zealand media sources over a 6-week period between 15 October and 26 November 2014. Articles were included if their primary focus was on health interventions involving medications, devices or in-hospital procedures.

Head-Jolting Nystagmus: Occlusion of the Horizontal Semicircular Canal Induced by Vigorous Head Shaking.

Importance: We report a new syndrome, which we are calling head-jolting nystagmus, that expands the differential diagnosis of head movement-induced paroxysmal vertigo.

Observations: Two male patients (65 and 58 years old) described rotational vertigo after violent and brief (1- to 2-second) oscillations of the head (head jolting) that triggered intense horizontal nystagmus lasting 45 seconds. Accelerations of the head required to induce these episodes could only be achieved by the patients themselves.

Autonomic dysfunction is a major feature of cerebellar ataxia, neuropathy, vestibular areflexia 'CANVAS' syndrome.

Cerebellar ataxia, neuropathy and vestibular areflexia syndrome (CANVAS) is a recently recognized neurodegenerative ganglionopathy. Prompted by the presence of symptomatic postural hypotension in two patients with CANVAS, we hypothesized that autonomic dysfunction may be an associated feature of the syndrome. We assessed symptoms of autonomic dysfunction and performed autonomic nervous system testing among 26 patients from New Zealand.

"Txt"-induced seizures indicating reading epilepsy in the mobile phone age.

Reading epilepsy is a rare type of reflex epilepsy. The seizures often comprise facial twitching and alexia, but can be difficult to recognise and mistaken for non-epileptic events. Previous reports have identified reading of printed text, television and computer screens as inducing seizures, but hand-held digital media have not been implicated.