Blarcamesine for the treatment of Early Alzheimer's Disease: Results from the ANAVEX2-73-AD-004 Phase IIB/III trial.

Background: There are no approved oral disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess efficacy and safety of blarcamesine (ANAVEX®2-73), an orally available small-molecule activator of the sigma-1 receptor (SIGMAR1) in early AD through restoration of cellular homeostasis including autophagy enhancement.

Design: ANAVEX2-73-AD-004 was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 48-week Phase IIb/III trial.

NFTsim: Theory and Simulation of Multiscale Neural Field Dynamics.

A user ready, portable, documented software package, NFTsim, is presented to facilitate numerical simulations of a wide range of brain systems using continuum neural field modeling. NFTsim enables users to simulate key aspects of brain activity at multiple scales. At the microscopic scale, it incorporates characteristics of local interactions between cells, neurotransmitter effects, synaptodendritic delays and feedbacks.

Spatiotemporally varying visual hallucinations: I. Corticothalamic theory.

The thalamus is introduced to a recent model of the visual cortex to examine its effect on pattern formation in general and the generation of temporally oscillating patterns in particular. By successively adding more physiological details to a basic corticothalamic model, it is determined which features are responsible for which effects. In particular, with the addition of a thalamic population, several changes occur in the spatiotemporal power spectrum: power increases at resonances of the corticothalamic loop, while the loop acts as a spatiotemporal low-pass filter, and synaptic and dendritic dynamics temporally low-pass filter the activity more generally.

Spatiotemporally varying visual hallucinations: II. Spectral classification and comparison with theory.

In order to better understand the nature of visual hallucinations, and to test predictions of spatiotemporally oscillating hallucinations from a recent corticothalamic model of visual dynamics, clinical descriptions of hallucinations are used to establish boundaries on the spatiotemporal frequencies observed in various disorders. Detailed comparisons with hallucinations during migraine aura demonstrate that key features are consistent with corticothalamic origin and specific abnormalities, but underline the need for more detailed quantitative data to be obtained on temporally oscillating hallucinations more generally.