Quantification of cervical spinal stenosis by automated 3D MRI segmentation of spinal cord and cerebrospinal fluid space.

Design: Prospective diagnostic study.

Objectives: Anatomical evaluation and graduation of the severity of spinal stenosis is essential in degenerative cervical spine disease. In clinical practice, this is subjectively categorized on cervical MRI lacking an objective and reliable classification.

Minimally invasive resection of a prominent transverse process in neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome: new application for a primarily spinal approach. Illustrative case.

Background: The optimal surgical approach to treat neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome (nTOS) depends on the individual patient's anatomy as well as the surgeon's experience. The authors present a minimally invasive posterior approach for the resection of a prominent transverse process to reduce local muscular trauma.

Observations: A 19-year-old female presented with painful sensations in the right arm and severe fine-motor skill dysfunction in the right hand, each of which had been present for several years.

Automated signal intensity analysis of the spinal cord for detection of degenerative cervical myelopathy - a matched-pair MRI study.

Purpose: Detection of T2 hyperintensities in suspected degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) is done subjectively in clinical practice. To gain objective quantification for dedicated treatment, signal intensity analysis of the spinal cord is purposeful. We investigated fully automated quantification of the T2 signal intensity (T2-SI) of the spinal cord using a high-resolution MRI segmentation.

CSF Flow and Spinal Cord Motion in Patients With Spontaneous Intracranial Hypotension: A Phase Contrast MRI Study.

Background And Objectives: Spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) is characterized by loss of CSF volume. We hypothesize that in this situation of low volume, a larger CSF flow and spinal cord motion at the upper spine can be measured by noninvasive phase contrast MRI.

Methods: A prospective, age-, sex-, and body mass index (BMI)-matched controlled cohort study on patients with SIH presenting with spinal longitudinal extradural fluid collection (SLEC) was conducted from October 2021 to February 2022.

The "hyperdense basivertebral vein" sign: another marker of a CSF-venous fistula.

CSF-venous fistulas - initially described in 2014 - are a significant cause of spontaneous intracranial hypotension. Dynamic lateral decubitus digital subtraction and/or CT myelography typically show a hyperdense paraspinal vein. In case of a central drainage toward the internal vertebral venous plexus, it is the "hyperdense basivertebral vein" which should be searched for carefully.

Diffusion tensor imaging in unclear intramedullary tumor-suspected lesions allows separating tumors from inflammation.

Design: Prospective diagnostic study.

Objectives: Primary imaging-based diagnosis of spinal cord tumor-suspected lesions is often challenging. The identification of the definite entity is crucial for dedicated treatment and therefore reduction of morbidity.

MRI of focal cortical dysplasia.

Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) are histopathologically categorized in ILAE type I to III. Mild malformations of cortical development (mMCD) including those with oligodendroglial hyperplasia (MOGHE) are to be integrated into this classification yet. Only FCD type II have distinctive MRI and molecular genetics alterations so far.

Spinal Cord Motion in Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy: The Level of the Stenotic Segment and Gender Cause Altered Pathodynamics.

In degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM), focally increased spinal cord motion has been observed for C5/C6, but whether stenoses at other cervical segments lead to similar pathodynamics and how severity of stenosis, age, and gender affect them is still unclear. We report a prospective matched-pair controlled trial on 65 DCM patients. A high-resolution 3D T2 sampling perfection with application-optimized contrasts using different flip angle evolution (SPACE) and a phase-contrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequence were performed and automatically segmented.

Measuring the Head Circumference on MRI in Children: an Interrater Study.

Purpose: The head circumference is typically used as a surrogate parameter for the development of the central nervous system and intracranial structures and is an important clinical parameter in neuropediatrics. As magnetic resonance images (MRI) can be freely zoomed, visual analysis of the head size often relies on impressions, such as the craniofacial ratio or a simplified gyral pattern. Aim of this study was to validate an MRI-based method to measure the head circumference.

Neural communication patterns underlying conflict detection, resolution, and adaptation.

In an ever-changing environment, selecting appropriate responses in conflicting situations is essential for biological survival and social success and requires cognitive control, which is mediated by dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). How these brain regions communicate during conflict processing (detection, resolution, and adaptation), however, is still unknown. The Stroop task provides a well-established paradigm to investigate the cognitive mechanisms mediating such response conflict.

An investigation of facial emotion recognition impairments in alexithymia and its neural correlates.

Alexithymia is a personality trait that involves difficulties identifying emotions and describing feelings. It is hypothesized that this includes facial emotion recognition but limited knowledge exists about possible neural correlates of this assumed deficit. We hence tested thirty-seven healthy subjects with either a relatively high or low degree of alexithymia (HDA versus LDA), who performed in a reliable and standardized test of facial emotion recognition (FEEL, Facially Expressed Emotion Labeling) in the functional MRI.

Hippocampal control of repetition effects for associative stimuli.

Recent findings suggest that repetition effects interact with episodic memory processes that are putatively supported by the hippocampus. Thus, the formation or refinement of episodic memories may be related to a modulating signal from the hippocampus to the neocortex which leads to sparser or more extended stimulus representations (repetition suppression or enhancement), depending on the type of stimulus and the brain site. This framework suggests that hippocampal activity during the initial presentation of a stimulus correlates with the magnitude of repetition effects.