Publications by authors named "Ningfei Li"

Deep brain stimulation is an efficacious treatment for dystonia. While the internal pallidum serves as the primary target, recently, stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been investigated. However, optimal targeting within this structure and its surroundings have not been studied in depth.

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Neuroimaging involves the acquisition of extensive 3D images and 4D time series data to gain insights into brain structure and function. The analysis of such data necessitates both spatial and temporal processing. In this context, "fslmaths" has established itself as a foundational software tool within our field, facilitating domain-specific image processing.

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  • * A study of 58 patients showed that different stimulation sites within STN are linked to specific improvements: cervical dystonia improved with stimulation of the ventral oral posterior nucleus, while limb dystonia and blepharospasm improved with dorsolateral STN stimulation.
  • * Each type of dystonia has distinct neural pathways and connectivity patterns, indicating that tailored stimulation targeting is essential for achieving the best treatment outcomes.
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  • Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) effectively improves symptoms of Parkinson's disease, including tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity, and axial symptoms, by stimulating specific white matter tracts.
  • A study involving 237 patients identified distinct brain tracts linked to improvements in each symptom, with tremor associated with the primary motor cortex and cerebellum, and axial symptoms linked to the supplementary motor cortex and brainstem.
  • An introduced algorithm utilizes these symptom-tract connections to tailor DBS settings for individual patients, aiming to enhance treatment effectiveness based on the most impactful symptoms for each person.
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Objective: Patients with coexisting spastic cerebral palsy (CP) and dystonia have limited treatment options. In this study, the authors aimed to evaluate the efficacy of deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeting the superior cerebellar peduncles (SCPs) in adults with CP.

Methods: Five patients with CP and medically refractory dystonia and spasticity underwent SCP DBS.

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Diffusion-weighted MRI (dMRI) is a widely used neuroimaging modality that permits the in vivo exploration of white matter connections in the human brain. Normative structural connectomics - the application of large-scale, group-derived dMRI datasets to out-of-sample cohorts - have increasingly been leveraged to study the network correlates of focal brain interventions, insults, and other regions-of-interest (ROIs). Here, we provide a normative, whole-brain connectome in MNI space that enables researchers to interrogate fiber streamlines that are likely perturbed by given ROIs, even in the absence of subject-specific dMRI data.

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Frontal circuits play a critical role in motor, cognitive and affective processing, and their dysfunction may result in a variety of brain disorders. However, exactly which frontal domains mediate which (dys)functions remains largely elusive. We studied 534 deep brain stimulation electrodes implanted to treat four different brain disorders.

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  • Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is being explored as an effective treatment for severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), with various potential targets in the brain, especially around the anterior limb of the internal capsule and ventral striatum.
  • A study involving 82 OCD patients identified two key stimulation sites linked to significant symptom improvements: one near the anterior limb of the internal capsule and another near the inferior thalamic peduncle, while also showing that stimulation at certain locations can lead to better outcomes for depression and anxiety.
  • The findings suggest that refining the targeting of DBS could enhance treatment effectiveness and help optimize DBS programming for patients already receiving therapy.
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Deep-brain stimulation (DBS) is a potential novel treatment for memory dysfunction. Current attempts to enhance memory focus on stimulating human hippocampus or entorhinal cortex. However, an alternative strategy is to stimulate brain areas providing modulatory inputs to medial temporal memory-related structures, such as the nucleus accumbens (NAc), which is implicated in enhancing episodic memory encoding.

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Brain computer interfaces (BCI) provide unprecedented spatiotemporal precision that will enable significant expansion in how numerous brain disorders are treated. Decoding dynamic patient states from brain signals with machine learning is required to leverage this precision, but a standardized framework for identifying and advancing novel clinical BCI approaches does not exist. Here, we developed a platform that integrates brain signal decoding with connectomics and demonstrate its utility across 123 hours of invasively recorded brain data from 73 neurosurgical patients treated for movement disorders, depression and epilepsy.

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  • Artificial groundwater recharge effectively addresses water shortages and uneven distribution, but changes in groundwater quality during the process must be carefully monitored.
  • Research from an experiment in Xiong'an New Area showed that the injection of recharge water affects groundwater levels and quality indicators like dissolved organic matter and microbial communities through various hydrogeochemical reactions.
  • Controlling elements like dissolved oxygen and organic matter in recharge water is crucial to minimize negative impacts on groundwater quality, highlighting the importance of understanding these interactions for better water management.
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Introduction: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established treatment in patients of various ages with pharmaco-resistant neurological disorders. Surgical targeting and postoperative programming of DBS depend on the spatial location of the stimulating electrodes in relation to the surrounding anatomical structures, and on electrode connectivity to a specific distribution pattern within brain networks. Such information is usually collected using group-level analysis, which relies on the availability of normative imaging resources (atlases and connectomes).

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Objective: This study was undertaken to describe relationships between electrode localization and motor outcomes from the subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) in early stage Parkinson disease (PD) pilot clinical trial.

Methods: To determine anatomical and network correlates associated with motor outcomes for subjects randomized to early DBS (n = 14), voxelwise sweet spot mapping and structural connectivity analyses were carried out using outcomes of motor progression (Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale Part III [UPDRS-III] 7-day OFF scores [∆baseline➔24 months, MedOFF/StimOFF]) and symptomatic motor improvement (UPDRS-III ON scores [%∆baseline➔24 months, MedON/StimON]).

Results: Sweet spot mapping revealed a location associated with slower motor progression in the dorsolateral STN (anterior/posterior commissure coordinates: 11.

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Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established and expanding therapy for treatment-refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder. Previous work has suggested that a white matter circuit providing hyperdirect input from the dorsal cingulate and ventrolateral prefrontal regions to the subthalamic nucleus could be an effective neuromodulatory target.

Methods: We tested this concept by attempting to retrospectively explain through predictive modeling the ranks of clinical improvement as measured by the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) in 10 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder who underwent DBS to the ventral anterior limb of internal capsule with subsequent programming uninformed by the putative target tract.

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Frontal circuits play a critical role in motor, cognitive, and affective processing - and their dysfunction may result in a variety of brain disorders. However, exactly which frontal domains mediate which (dys)function remains largely elusive. Here, we study 534 deep brain stimulation electrodes implanted to treat four different brain disorders.

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Background: Deep brain stimulation of the anterior limb of the internal capsule (ALIC)/nucleus accumbens is an effective treatment in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder but may increase impulsive behavior. We aimed to investigate how active stimulation alters subdomains of impulsive decision making and whether respective effects depend on the location of stimulation sites.

Methods: We assessed 15 participants with obsessive-compulsive disorder performing the Cambridge Gambling Task during active and inactive ALIC/nucleus accumbens deep brain stimulation.

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Following its introduction in 2014 and with support of a broad international community, the open-source toolbox Lead-DBS has evolved into a comprehensive neuroimaging platform dedicated to localizing, reconstructing, and visualizing electrodes implanted in the human brain, in the context of deep brain stimulation (DBS) and epilepsy monitoring. Expanding clinical indications for DBS, increasing availability of related research tools, and a growing community of clinician-scientist researchers, however, have led to an ongoing need to maintain, update, and standardize the codebase of Lead-DBS. Major development efforts of the platform in recent years have now yielded an end-to-end solution for DBS-based neuroimaging analysis allowing comprehensive image preprocessing, lead localization, stimulation volume modeling, and statistical analysis within a single tool.

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Deep brain stimulation (DBS) to the fornix is an investigational treatment for patients with mild Alzheimer's Disease. Outcomes from randomized clinical trials have shown that cognitive function improved in some patients but deteriorated in others. This could be explained by variance in electrode placement leading to differential engagement of neural circuits.

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Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established therapy for patients with Parkinson's disease. In silico computer models for DBS hold the potential to inform a selection of stimulation parameters. In recent years, the focus has shifted towards DBS-induced firing in myelinated axons, deemed particularly relevant for the external modulation of neural activity.

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Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a promising novel approach for managing refractory Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome (GTS). The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is the most common DBS target for treating movement disorders, and smaller case studies have reported the efficacy of bilateral STN-DBS treatment for relieving tic symptoms. However, management of GTS and treatment mechanism of STN-DBS in GTS remain to be elucidated.

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Brain signal decoding promises significant advances in the development of clinical brain computer interfaces (BCI). In Parkinson's disease (PD), first bidirectional BCI implants for adaptive deep brain stimulation (DBS) are now available. Brain signal decoding can extend the clinical utility of adaptive DBS but the impact of neural source, computational methods and PD pathophysiology on decoding performance are unknown.

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Article Synopsis
  • Dystonia is a challenging condition with limited treatment options, but deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeting the internal pallidum shows promise for symptom relief.
  • A study involving 80 patients explored optimal DBS electrode placements and identified different effective stimulation sites for cervical and generalized dystonia, linking these sites to specific brain structures.
  • The findings indicate that while different neural pathways are involved in treating cervical versus generalized dystonia, both conditions share a common brain network that integrates connectivity to the cerebellum and somatomotor cortex.
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Objectives: Up to 40% of patients with idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE) are drug resistant and potentially could benefit from intracranial neuromodulation of the seizure circuit. We present outcomes following 2 years of thalamic-responsive neurostimulation for IGE.

Methods: Four patients with pharmacoresistant epilepsy underwent RNS System implantation in the bilateral centromedian (CM) nucleus region.

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