Aeromedical evacuation-relevant hypobaria following traumatic brain injury in rats contributes to cerebral blood flow depression, altered neurochemistry, and increased neuroinflammation.

Aircraft cabins are routinely pressurized to the equivalent of 8000 ft altitude. Exposure of lab animals to aeromedical evacuation relevant hypobaria after traumatic brain injury worsens neurological outcomes, which is paradoxically exacerbated by hyperoxia. This study tested the hypothesis that exposure of rats to hypobaria following cortical impact reduces cerebral blood flow, increases neuroinflammation, and alters brain neurochemistry.

Longitudinal Assessment of Glymphatic Changes Following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: Insights from PVS burden and DTI-ALPS Imaging.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) even in the mild form may result in long-lasting post-concussion symptoms. TBI is also a known risk to late-life neurodegeneration. Recent studies suggest that dysfunction in the glymphatic system, responsible for clearing protein waste from the brain, may play a pivotal role in the development of dementia following TBI.

Simultaneous Measurement of GABA, Glutathione, and Glutamate-Glutamine in the Thalamus using Edited MR Spectroscopy: Feasibility and Applications in Traumatic Brain Injury.

Background: MR spectroscopy (MRS) is a noninvasive tool for evaluating biochemical alterations, such as glutamate (Glu)/gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) imbalance and depletion of antioxidative glutathione (GSH) after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Thalamus, a critical and vulnerable region post-TBI, is challenging for MRS acquisitions, necessitating optimization to simultaneously measure GABA/Glu and GSH.

Purpose: To assess the feasibility and optimize acquisition and processing approaches for simultaneously measuring GABA, Glx (Glu + glutamine (Gln)), and GSH in the thalamus, employing Hadamard encoding and reconstruction of MEscher-GArwood (MEGA)-edited spectroscopy (HERMES).

Focused Ultrasound Central Lateral Thalamotomy for the Treatment of Refractory Neuropathic Pain: Phase I Trial.

Background And Objectives: Magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) central lateral thalamotomy (CLT) has not yet been validated for treating refractory neuropathic pain (NP). Our aim was to assess the safety and potential efficacy of MRgFUS CLT for refractory NP.

Methods: In this prospective, nonrandomized, single-arm, investigator-initiated phase I trial, patients with NP for more than 6 months related to phantom limb pain, spinal cord injury, or radiculopathy/radicular injury and who had undergone at least one previous failed intervention were eligible.

Toward vendor-independent measurement of cerebral venous oxygenation: Comparison of TRUST MRI across three major MRI manufacturers and association with end-tidal CO.

Cerebral venous oxygenation (Y ) is a valuable biomarker for a variety of brain diseases. T relaxation under spin tagging (TRUST) MRI is a widely used method for Y quantification. In this work, there were two main objectives.

Plasma neurofilament light and brain volumetric outcomes among middle-aged urban adults.

Elevated plasma neurofilament light chain (NfL) is associated with dementia though underlying mechanisms remain unknown. We examined cross-sectional relationships of time-dependent plasma NfL with selected brain structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) prognostic markers of dementia. The sample was drawn from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity Across the Life Span (HANDLS) study, selecting participants with complete v (2004-2009) and v (2009-2013) plasma NfL exposure and ancillary sMRI data at v (2011-2015, n = 179, mean v to v time: 5.

Label Propagation via Random Walk for Training Robust Thalamus Nuclei Parcellation Model from Noisy Annotations.

Data-driven thalamic nuclei parcellation depends on high-quality manual annotations. However, the small size and low contrast changes among thalamic nuclei, yield annotations that are often incomplete, noisy, or ambiguously labelled. To train a robust thalamic nuclei parcellation model with noisy annotations, we propose a label propagation algorithm based on random walker to refine the annotations before model training.

Supraspinatus fatty infiltration on MRI among older adults receiving physical therapy as initial management for clinically suspected rotator cuff tear: A pilot study.

Objectives: Rotator cuff (RC) tear is common among adults ≥60 years, with supraspinatus tear most common. Intramuscular fatty infiltration (FI) on imaging is predictive of long-term outcomes following RC tear. Physical therapists routinely diagnose RC tear only by clinical examination since most do not order imaging studies.

White matter integrity as a mediator between socioeconomic status and executive function.

Introduction: Lower socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with poorer executive function, but the neural mechanisms of this association remain unclear. As healthy brain communication is essential to our cognitive abilities, white matter integrity may be key to understanding socioeconomic disparities.

Methods: Participants were 201 African American and White adults (ages 33-72) from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) SCAN study.

Plasma neurofilament light as blood marker for poor brain white matter integrity among middle-aged urban adults.

Plasma neurofilament light chain (NfL)'s link to dementia may be mediated through white matter integrity (WMI). In this study, we examined plasma NfL's relationships with diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging markers: global and cortical white matter fractional anisotropy (FA) and trace (TR). Plasma NfL measurements at 2 times (v: 2004-2009 and v: 2009-2013) and ancillary dMRI (v: 2011-2015) were considered (n = 163, mean time v to v = 5.

Validation of Muscle Fiber Architecture of the Human Tongue Revealed by Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging With Histology Verification.

Purpose: The goal of this study is to validate the muscle architecture derived from both ex vivo and in vivo diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) of the human tongue with histology of an ex vivo tongue.

Method: dMRI was acquired with a 200-direction high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) diffusion scheme for both a postmortem head (imaged within 48 hr after death) and a healthy volunteer. After MRI, the postmortem head was fixed and the tongue excised for hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining and histology imaging.

Association between Sleep Disturbances at Subacute Stage of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Long-Term Outcomes.

Mild (mTBI) traumatic brain injury (TBI) accounts for the majority of all TBI cases. Evidence has suggested that patients with mTBI can suffer from long-lasting cognitive deficits, persistent symptoms, and decreased quality of life. Sleep disorders are commonly observed after TBI, with the prevalence rate of sleep disturbances in persons with TBI being much higher than that in the general population.

Tonic pain alters functional connectivity of the descending pain modulatory network involving amygdala, periaqueductal gray, parabrachial nucleus and anterior cingulate cortex.

Introduction: Resting state functional connectivity (FC) is widely used to assess functional brain alterations in patients with chronic pain. However, reports of FC accompanying tonic pain in pain-free persons are rare. A network we term the Descending Pain Modulatory Network (DPMN) is implicated in healthy and pathologic pain modulation.

Evaluating the impact of MR image harmonization on thalamus deep network segmentation.

Medical image segmentation is one of the core tasks of medical image analysis. Automatic segmentation of brain magnetic resonance images (MRIs) can be used to visualize and track changes of the brain's anatomical structures that may occur due to normal aging or disease. Machine learning techniques are widely used in automatic structure segmentation.

Brain responses to painful electrical stimuli and cognitive tasks interact in the precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, and inferior parietal cortex and do not vary across the menstrual cycle.

Introduction: Bidirectional effects between cognition and pain have been extensively reported. Although brain regions involved in cognitive and pain processing seem to partly overlap, it is unknown what specific brain regions are involved in the interaction between pain and cognition. Furthermore, the role of gonadal hormones on these interacting effects has not been examined.

Combined Traumatic Brain Injury and Hemorrhagic Shock in Ferrets Leads to Structural, Neurochemical, and Functional Impairments.

Aeromedical evacuation-relevant hypobaria after traumatic brain injury (TBI) leads to increased neurological injury and death in rats relative to those maintained under normobaria. Applicability of rodent brain injury research to humans may be limited, however, by differences in neuroanatomy. Therefore, we developed a model in which ferrets are exposed to polytrauma consisting of controlled cortical impact TBI and hemorrhagic shock subjected 24 h later to 6 h of hypobaria or normobaria.

Technical Comparison of Treatment Efficiency of Magnetic Resonance-Guided Focused Ultrasound Thalamotomy and Pallidotomy in Skull Density Ratio-Matched Patient Cohorts.

Objective: MR-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) is increasingly being used to treat patients with essential tremor (ET) and Parkinson's disease (PD) with thalamotomy and pallidotomy, respectively. Pallidotomy is performed off-center within the cranium compared to thalamotomy and may present challenges to therapeutic lesioning due to this location. However, the impact of target location on treatment efficiency and ability to create therapeutic lesions has not been studied.

Alterations in motor functional connectivity in Neonatal Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy.

Background: Neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) is the result of global hypoxic-ischemic brain injury in neonates due to asphyxia during birth and is one of the most common causes of severe, long-term neurologic deficits in children. Resting state fMRI (rs-fMRI) was used to assess potential functional disruptions in the primary and association motor areas in HIE neonates (n = 16) compared to healthy controls (n = 11).

Results: Results demonstrate reduced intra-hemispheric resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) between primary motor regions (upper extremity and facial motor regions) as well as reduced inter-hemispheric rs-FC in the HIE group.

Red cell distribution width, anemia and their associations with white matter integrity among middle-aged urban adults.

Anemia (blood hemoglobin [Hb] <13 g/dL among males; <12 g/dL among females) and elevated red cell distribution width (RDW) are potential risk factors for reduced brain white matter integrity (WMI), reflected by lower fractional anisotropy or increased mean diffusivity. Cross-sectional data with exposure-outcome lag time was used, whereby hematological exposures (RDW and Hb) and covariates were compiled from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) study with available visit 1 (v; 2004-2009) and/or v (2009-2013) data; while diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) outcome data were collected at HANDLS SCAN visit (v: 2011-2015, n = 214, mean follow-up from v ±SD: 5.6 ± 1.

Enhancing Metabolic Imaging of Energy Metabolism in Traumatic Brain Injury Using Hyperpolarized [1-C]Pyruvate and Dichloroacetate.

Hyperpolarized magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) of [1-C]pyruvate metabolism has previously been used to assess the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in rats. Here, we show that MRSI can be used in conjunction with dichloroacetate to measure the phosphorylation state of pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) following mild-to-moderate TBI, and that measurements can be repeated in a longitudinal study to monitor the course of injury progression and recovery. We found that the level of C-bicarbonate and the bicarbonate-to-lactate ratio decreased on the injured side of the brain four hours after injury and continued to decrease through day 7.

Corrigendum: Vitamin D, Folate, and Cobalamin Serum Concentrations Are Related to Brain Volume and White Matter Integrity in Urban Adults.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2020.