Publications by authors named "Piper R"

Peripheral Myelin Protein 22 (PMP22) and MPZ are abundant myelin membrane proteins in Schwann cells. The MPZ adhesion protein holds myelin wraps together across the intraperiod line. PMP22 is a tetraspan protein belonging to the Claudin superfamily.

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  • Hippocampal sclerosis (HS) is a major cause of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) but can be hard to detect on MRI, leading to surgical delays, so researchers created open-source software to improve diagnosis.
  • The study involved 365 participants, using the software HippUnfold to analyze MRI scans and develop a logistic regression model that accurately identifies and localizes HS.
  • The classifier showed high accuracy in detecting HS in both initial and independent patient cohorts, proving effective for individual assessments by comparing patient data with normative growth patterns.
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Objective: Evaluate the sensitivity and financial costs of Trans-Impedance Matrix recordings, Spread of Excitation functions, and x-rays in detecting cochlear implant tip foldovers.

Setting: Tertiary academic medical center.

Patients: 113 ears of 108 patients.

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Objective: The piriform cortex is considered to be highly epileptogenic. Its resection during epilepsy surgery is a predictor for postoperative seizure freedom in temporal lobe epilepsy. Epilepsy is associated with a dysfunction of the blood-brain barrier.

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  • HD-PTP (or PTPN23) plays a key role in the formation of multivesicular bodies by aiding endosomal sorting complexes, which is important for cellular transport.
  • Researchers created mice with reduced HD-PTP levels to study its physiological effects, discovering these mice displayed lipodystrophy and impaired signaling in white adipose tissue related to various pathways, including RAS/MAPK and PI3K/AKT.
  • The study found that while EGF binding was normal, there was reduced signaling activation due to changes in cholesterol distribution within cells, suggesting a crucial role for HD-PTP in both signaling regulation and maintaining fat tissue health.
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Exposure to ambient particulate matter (PM) has been identified as a major global health concern; however, the importance of specific chemical PM components remains uncertain. Recent studies have suggested that carbonaceous aerosols are important detrimental components of the particle mixture. Using time-series methods, we investigated associations between short-term exposure to carbonaceous particles and mortality in London, UK.

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Objectives: Given well-documented disparities in rural and minority communities, alternative service delivery models that help improve access to hearing care are needed. This article reports on a study of older Latino adults with hearing loss who received hearing aid services with Community Health Workers (CHWs) providing support via teleaudiology. The present study used qualitative data to explore perceptions of this novel service delivery model.

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Neuropsychological impairments are common in children with drug-resistant epilepsy. It has been proposed that epilepsy surgery might alleviate these impairments by providing seizure freedom; however, findings from prior studies have been inconsistent. We mapped long-term neuropsychological trajectories in children before and after undergoing epilepsy surgery, to measure the impact of disease course and surgery on functioning.

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  • A significant portion of epilepsy patients still experience seizures despite treatment, prompting exploration of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as a potential supplementary therapy for genetic generalized epilepsy (GGE).
  • A study involved both healthy controls and GGE patients receiving tDCS while undergoing fMRI, assessing its effects on sensorimotor cortex connectivity through three stimulation types: anodal, cathodal, and sham.
  • Results indicated that tDCS was safe and well-tolerated, with anodal and cathodal stimulation leading to a notable decrease in sensorimotor network connectivity, while the sham condition showed no significant differences compared to rest.
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Epilepsy is increasingly recognised as a brain network disorder and many studies have investigated functional connectivity (FC) in children with epilepsy using functional MRI (fMRI). This systematic review of fMRI studies, published up to November 2023, investigated profiles of FC changes and their clinical relevance in children with focal epilepsy compared to healthy controls. A literature search in PubMed and Web of Science yielded 62 articles.

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Ecitonides constanceae sp. nov., a new species of the myrmecophilous genus Ecitonides Wasmann, 1894, which is associated with army ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ecitoninae), is described from Peru.

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PMP22 and MPZ are abundant myelin membrane proteins in Schwann cells. The MPZ adhesion protein holds myelin wraps together across the intraperiod line. PMP22 is a tetraspan protein belonging to the Claudin superfamily.

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Providing clinicians with objective outcomes of neuromodulation therapy is a key unmet need, especially in emerging areas such as epilepsy and mood disorders. These diseases have episodic behavior and circadian/multidien rhythm characteristics that are difficult to capture in short clinical follow-ups. This work presents preliminary validation evidence for an implantable neuromodulation system with integrated physiological event monitoring, with an initial focus on seizure tracking for epilepsy.

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Intracranial neuromodulation is an evolving therapy for patients with drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE). Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is now available as a therapy for patients with DRE and focal-onset seizures in select health care systems; however, there remains a substantial need of efficacy data before DBS can be more widely adopted into routine clinical practice. This review and commentary focuses on a particular shifting paradigm: DBS as a therapy for children with generalized-onset seizures.

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Optimizing the spin coating of silver nanowires to form transparent conducting electrodes (TCE) is guided by machine learning (ML). A good TCE has two competing characteristics: high transmittance and high conductance. Optimization using a scalar figure of merit, as often done in the field, cannot satisfy the independent requirements for transmittance and conductance imposed by specific applications.

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Voltage-gated sodium (Na) channels drive the upstroke of the action potential and are comprised of a pore-forming α-subunit and regulatory β-subunits. The β-subunits modulate the gating, trafficking, and pharmacology of the α-subunit. These functions are routinely assessed by ectopic expression in heterologous cells.

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Mutations in MPZ (myelin protein zero) can cause demyelinating early-onset Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 1B disease or later onset type 2I/J disease characterized by axonal degeneration, reflecting the diverse roles of MPZ in Schwann cells. MPZ holds apposing membranes of the myelin sheath together, with the adhesion role fulfilled by its extracellular immunoglobulin-like domain (IgMPZ), which oligomerizes. Models for how the IgMPZ might form oligomeric assemblies has been extrapolated from a protein crystal structure in which individual rat IgMPZ subunits are packed together under artificial conditions, forming three weak interfaces.

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Objective: A greater extent of resection of the temporal portion of the piriform cortex (PC) has been shown to be associated with higher likelihood of seizure freedom in adults undergoing anterior temporal lobe resection (ATLR) for drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). There have been no such studies in children, therefore this study aimed to investigate this association in a pediatric cohort.

Methods: A retrospective, neuroimaging cohort study of children with TLE who underwent ATLR between 2012 and 2021 was undertaken.

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Background And Purpose: Prior studies have found an association between calcification and the epileptogenicity of tubers in tuberous sclerosis complex. Quantitative susceptibility mapping is a novel tool sensitive to magnetic susceptibility alterations due to tissue calcification. We assessed the utility of quantitative susceptibility mapping in identifying putative epileptogenic tubers in tuberous sclerosis complex using stereoelectroencephalography data as ground truth.

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Objective: Neurosurgery is a safe and effective form of treatment for select children with drug-resistant epilepsy. Still, there is concern that it remains underutilized, and that seizure freedom rates have not improved over time. We investigated referral and surgical practices, patient characteristics, and postoperative outcomes over the past two decades.

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Objectives: Our objective was to review the outcomes of children with CIM and associated cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) disorders and ventriculomegaly undergoing endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) as a primary intervention.

Materials And Methods: A retrospective, single-center, observational cohort study was conducted of consecutive children with CIM with associated CSF disorders and ventriculomegaly treated first by ETV between January 2014 and December 2020.

Results: Raised intracranial pressure symptoms were the most frequent in ten patients, followed by posterior fossa and syrinx symptoms in three cases.

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Oceanographic changes adjacent to Antarctica have global climatic and ecological impacts. However, this is the most challenging place in the world to obtain marine data due to its remoteness and inhospitable nature, especially in winter. Here, we present more than 2000 Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) profiles and associated water sample data collected with (almost uniquely) full year-round coverage from the British Antarctic Survey Rothera Research Station at the west Antarctic Peninsula.

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Objective: The accurate prediction of seizure freedom after epilepsy surgery remains challenging. We investigated if (1) training more complex models, (2) recruiting larger sample sizes, or (3) using data-driven selection of clinical predictors would improve our ability to predict postoperative seizure outcome using clinical features. We also conducted the first substantial external validation of a machine learning model trained to predict postoperative seizure outcome.

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Background: This study assessed the international variation in surgical neuro-oncology practice and 30-day outcomes of patients who had surgery for an intracranial tumor during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: We prospectively included adults aged ≥18 years who underwent surgery for a malignant or benign intracranial tumor across 55 international hospitals from 26 countries. Each participating hospital recorded cases for 3 consecutive months from the start of the pandemic.

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