Perceptual bias for affective and nonaffective information in asymmetric Parkinson's disease.

Objective: To relate lateralized impairments of visual perception in Parkinson's disease to asymmetries in the severity of motor symptoms.

Method: Ten patients with worse left-sided motor symptoms (LPD), 15 with worse right-sided (RPD), and 13 healthy age-matched controls (all right-handed) viewed mirror-imaged pairs of emotional chimeric faces, (left side smiling, right neutral, and vice versa), of greyscales (strips whose luminance varied smoothly from black on the left to white on the right, and vice versa) and of gender chimeric faces (left side male, right female, and vice versa). Participants signaled which stimulus appeared happier, brighter, or more feminine, respectively, so showing which side received more attention.

Deep brain stimulation in childhood: an effective treatment for early onset idiopathic generalised dystonia.

Background: Early onset idiopathic generalised dystonia is a progressive and profoundly disabling condition. Medical treatment may ameliorate symptoms. However, many children have profound, intractable disability including the loss of ambulation and speech, and difficulties with feeding.

Unilateral and bilateral pallidotomy for idiopathic Parkinson's disease: a case series of 115 patients.

Lesioning of the internal pallidum is known to improve the symptoms of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and alleviate dyskinesia and motor fluctuations related to levodopa therapy. The benefit obtained contralateral to a single lesion is insufficient in some cases when symptoms are bilaterally disabling. However, reports of unacceptably high rates of adverse effects after bilateral pallidotomy have limited its use in such cases.

Involvement of the medial pallidum in focal myoclonic dystonia: A clinical and neurophysiological case study.

We successfully treated a patient with familial myoclonic dystonia (FMD), which primarily affected his neck muscles, with bilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS) to the medial pallidum, and investigated the role of the medial pallidum in FMD. A patient with FMD underwent bilateral implantation of DBS electrodes during which field potentials (FPs) in the medial pallidum and electromyograms (EMGs) from the affected neck muscles were recorded. The effects of high-frequency DBS to the medial pallidum on the FMD were also assessed by recording EMGs during and immediately after implantation, as well as 6 days and 8 weeks postoperatively.