Identifying the needs of people with long COVID: a qualitative study in the UK.

Objectives: To identify the needs of people with long COVID (LC) in the UK.

Design: Qualitative study using the Framework Analysis to analyse focus group discussions.

Participants: 25 adults with LC aged 19-76 years including 17 men and 8 women.

Does repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation improve cognitive function in age-related neurodegenerative diseases? A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objective: High-frequency, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) targeted over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is widely used in research to promote neuroplasticity and cognitive enhancement. RTMS is a promising intervention to tackle cognitive decline in people with age-related neurodegenerative diseases. However, there is currently no systematic evidence examining the effects of DLPFC-targeted, high-frequency rTMS on cognitive function in this population.

Mini-Review on the Harlequin Syndrome-A Rare Dysautonomic Manifestation Requiring Attention.

Harlequin syndrome (HS) is a rare autonomic disorder. The causes and risk factors of the disease are not fully understood. Some cases of HS are associated with traumatic injuries, tumors, or vascular impairments of the head.

Post-Concussion Syndrome and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: Narrative Review on the Neuropathology, Neuroimaging and Fluid Biomarkers.

Traumatic brain injury is a significant public health issue and represents the main contributor to death and disability globally among all trauma-related injuries. Martial arts practitioners, military veterans, athletes, victims of physical abuse, and epileptic patients could be affected by the consequences of repetitive mild head injuries (RMHI) that do not resume only to short-termed traumatic brain injuries (TBI) effects but also to more complex and time-extended outcomes, such as post-concussive syndrome (PCS) and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). These effects in later life are not yet well understood; however, recent studies suggested that even mild head injuries can lead to an elevated risk of later-life cognitive impairment and neurodegenerative disease.

YKL-40 as a Potential Biomarker for the Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, associated with extensive neuronal loss, dendritic and synaptic changes resulting in significant cognitive impairment. An increased number of studies have given rise to the neuroinflammatory hypothesis in AD. It is widely accepted that AD brains show chronic inflammation, probably triggered by the presence of insoluble amyloid beta deposits and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) and is also related to the activation of neuronal death cascade.

Gray Matter Changes in Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy. A Voxel-Wise Meta-Analysis.

. Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) is an idiopathic generalized epileptic syndrome, with a genetic basis clinically identified by myoclonic jerks of the upper limbs upon awaking, generalized tonic-clonic seizures and less frequent absences. Although the brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is by definition normal, computer-based Voxel-Based morphometry studies have shown a number of volumetric changes in patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy.

Learning in anticipation of reward and punishment: perspectives across the human lifespan.

Learning to act to receive reward and to withhold to avoid punishment has been found to be easier than learning the opposite contingencies in young adults. To what extent this type of behavioral adaptation might develop during childhood and adolescence and differ during aging remains unclear. We therefore tested 247 healthy individuals across the human life span (7-80 years) with an orthogonalized valenced go/no-go learning task.

Dorsal striatal dopamine D1 receptor availability predicts an instrumental bias in action learning.

Learning to act to obtain reward and inhibit to avoid punishment is easier compared with learning the opposite contingencies. This coupling of action and valence is often thought of as a Pavlovian bias, although recent research has shown it may also emerge through instrumental mechanisms. We measured this learning bias with a rewarded go/no-go task in 60 adults of different ages.

Brain tissue properties differentiate between motor and limbic basal ganglia circuits.

Despite advances in understanding basic organizational principles of the human basal ganglia, accurate in vivo assessment of their anatomical properties is essential to improve early diagnosis in disorders with corticosubcortical pathology and optimize target planning in deep brain stimulation. Main goal of this study was the detailed topological characterization of limbic, associative, and motor subdivisions of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in relation to corresponding corticosubcortical circuits. To this aim, we used magnetic resonance imaging and investigated independently anatomical connectivity via white matter tracts next to brain tissue properties.

Widespread age-related differences in the human brain microstructure revealed by quantitative magnetic resonance imaging.

A pressing need exists to disentangle age-related changes from pathologic neurodegeneration. This study aims to characterize the spatial pattern and age-related differences of biologically relevant measures in vivo over the course of normal aging. Quantitative multiparameter maps that provide neuroimaging biomarkers for myelination and iron levels, parameters sensitive to aging, were acquired from 138 healthy volunteers (age range: 19-75 years).

Differential, but not opponent, effects of L -DOPA and citalopram on action learning with reward and punishment.

Rationale: Decision-making involves two fundamental axes of control namely valence, spanning reward and punishment, and action, spanning invigoration and inhibition. We recently exploited a go/no-go task whose contingencies explicitly decouple valence and action to show that these axes are inextricably coupled during learning. This results in a disadvantage in learning to go to avoid punishment and in learning to no-go to obtain a reward.

Characterizing aging in the human brainstem using quantitative multimodal MRI analysis.

Aging is ubiquitous to the human condition. The MRI correlates of healthy aging have been extensively investigated using a range of modalities, including volumetric MRI, quantitative MRI (qMRI), and diffusion tensor imaging. Despite this, the reported brainstem related changes remain sparse.

Parcellation of the human substantia nigra based on anatomical connectivity to the striatum.

Substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA) subregions, defined by dopaminergic projections to the striatum, are differentially affected by health (e.g. normal aging) and disease (e.

Structural integrity of the substantia nigra and subthalamic nucleus predicts flexibility of instrumental learning in older-age individuals.

Flexible instrumental learning is required to harness the appropriate behaviors to obtain rewards and to avoid punishments. The precise contribution of dopaminergic midbrain regions (substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area [SN/VTA]) to this form of behavioral adaptation remains unclear. Normal aging is associated with a variable loss of dopamine neurons in the SN/VTA.

Dopamine restores reward prediction errors in old age.

Senescence affects the ability to utilize information about the likelihood of rewards for optimal decision-making. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans, we found that healthy older adults had an abnormal signature of expected value, resulting in an incomplete reward prediction error (RPE) signal in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region that receives rich input projections from substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA) dopaminergic neurons. Structural connectivity between SN/VTA and striatum, measured by diffusion tensor imaging, was tightly coupled to inter-individual differences in the expression of this expected reward value signal.

Dopamine modulates episodic memory persistence in old age.

Activation of the hippocampus is required to encode memories for new events (or episodes). Observations from animal studies suggest that, for these memories to persist beyond 4-6 h, a release of dopamine generated by strong hippocampal activation is needed. This predicts that dopaminergic enhancement should improve human episodic memory persistence also for events encoded with weak hippocampal activation.

How dopamine enhances an optimism bias in humans.

When predicting financial profits, relationship outcomes, longevity, or professional success, people habitually underestimate the likelihood of future negative events. This well-known bias, termed unrealistic optimism, is observed across age, culture, and species, and has a significant societal impact on domains ranging from financial markets to health and well being. However, it is unknown how neuromodulatory systems impact on the generation of optimistically biased beliefs.

Action controls dopaminergic enhancement of reward representations.

Dopamine is widely observed to signal anticipation of future rewards and thus thought to be a key contributor to affectively charged decision making. However, the experiments supporting this view have not dissociated rewards from the actions that lead to, or are occasioned by, them. Here, we manipulated dopamine pharmacologically and examined the effect on a task that explicitly dissociates action and reward value.

FAST positive does not always mean stroke.

Patients who are face, arm, speech test (FAST) positive may have a stroke mimic diagnosis. Careful attention to the speed of onset of symptoms is paramount. Magnetic resonance imaging is helpful in supplementing the clinical assessment.

Neurocognitive function in unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with bipolar disorder: a preliminary report.

Objective: Patients with remitted bipolar disorder (BD) have persistent impairments in neuropsychological function, particularly in the domains of executive control and declarative memory [Br J Psychiatry 180 (2002) 293]. If these were the phenotypic expression of genetic vulnerability to BD, then healthy subjects with a genetic predisposition to BD would be expected to display the same deficits. This study, therefore, examined neuropsychological function in healthy first-degree relatives of patients with BD.