Remotely monitored transcranial direct current stimulation in pediatric cerebral palsy: open label trial protocol.

Background: Pediatric applications of non-invasive brain stimulation using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have demonstrated its safety with few adverse events reported. Remotely monitored tDCS, as an adjuvant intervention to rehabilitation, may improve quality of life for children with cerebral palsy (CP) through motor function improvements, reduced treatment costs, and increased access to tDCS therapies. Our group previously evaluated the feasibility of a remotely monitored mock tDCS setup in which families and children successfully demonstrated the ability to follow tDCS instructional guidance.

Motor Imagery as a Function of Disease Severity in Multiple Sclerosis: An fMRI Study.

Motor imagery (MI) is defined as mental execution without any actual movement. While healthy adults usually show temporal equivalence, i.e.

Neural correlates of lower limbs proprioception: An fMRI study of foot position matching.

Little is known about the neural correlates of lower limbs position sense, despite the impact that proprioceptive deficits have on everyday life activities, such as posture and gait control. We used fMRI to investigate in 30 healthy right-handed and right-footed subjects the regional distribution of brain activity during position matching tasks performed with the right dominant and the left nondominant foot. Along with the brain activation, we assessed the performance during both ipsilateral and contralateral matching tasks.

The social hippocampus.

The concept of cognitive map has been proposed as a way to organize our experiences and guide behavior across all domains of cognition. The hippocampus has been identified as the neural substrate supporting cognitive maps for navigating physical space. Recent evidence is broadening the role of the hippocampus into mapping other manner of spaces.

A composite measure to explore visual disability in primary progressive multiple sclerosis.

Background: Optical coherence tomography (OCT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can provide complementary information on visual system damage in multiple sclerosis (MS).

Objectives: The objective of this paper is to determine whether a composite OCT/MRI score, reflecting cumulative damage along the entire visual pathway, can predict visual deficits in primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS).

Methods: Twenty-five PPMS patients and 20 age-matched controls underwent neuro-ophthalmologic evaluation, spectral-domain OCT, and 3T brain MRI.

Relationship between timed 25-foot walk and diffusion tensor imaging in multiple sclerosis.

Objective/background: The majority of multiple sclerosis patients experience impaired walking ability, which impacts quality of life. Timed 25-foot walk is commonly used to gauge gait impairment but results can be broadly variable. Objective biological markers that correlate closely with patients' disability are needed.

Synchronization and variability imbalance underlie cognitive impairment in primary-progressive multiple sclerosis.

We aimed to investigate functional connectivity and variability across multiple frequency bands in brain networks underlying cognitive deficits in primary-progressive multiple sclerosis (PP-MS) and to explore how they are affected by the presence of cortical lesions (CLs). We analyzed functional connectivity and variability (measured as the standard deviation of BOLD signal amplitude) in resting state networks (RSNs) associated with cognitive deficits in different frequency bands in 25 PP-MS patients (12 M, mean age 50.9 ± 10.

Upper motor neuron evaluation in multiple sclerosis patients treated with Sativex.

Background: Spasticity in multiple sclerosis (MS) results from an imbalance of inputs from descending pathways to the spinal motor circuits, as well as from a damage of the corticospinal tract (CST).

Objectives: To assess CST impairment in MS patients with and without spasticity and to evaluate its evolution under Sativex treatment.

Methods: Ten MS patients with spasticity ("cases") underwent clinical (EDSS, 9-hole Peg, Ashworth scale, Timed 25-Foot Walk, and NRS for spasticity), MRI (CST fractional anisotropy [FA]), and electrophysiological (central motor conduction time [CMCT] and H/M ratio) evaluations at baseline and after 12 months.

Abnormal functional-structural cingulum connectivity in mania: combined functional magnetic resonance imaging-diffusion tensor imaging investigation in different phases of bipolar disorder.

Objective: The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between structural connectivity (SC) and functional connectivity (FC) in the cingulum in bipolar disorder (BD) and its various phases.

Method: We combined resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and probabilistic tractographic diffusion tensor imaging to investigate FC and SC of the cingulum and its portions, the SC-FC relationship, and their correlations with clinical and neurocognitive measures on sustained attention in manic (n = 21), depressed (n = 20), and euthymic (n = 20) bipolar patients and healthy controls (HC) (n = 42).

Results: First, we found decreased FC between the anterior and posterior parts of the cingulum in manic patients when compared to depressed patients and HC.

Resting-state functional connectivity and motor imagery brain activation.

Motor imagery (MI) relies on the mental simulation of an action without any overt motor execution (ME), and can facilitate motor learning and enhance the effect of rehabilitation in patients with neurological conditions. While functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during MI and ME reveals shared cortical representations, the role and functional relevance of the resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of brain regions involved in MI is yet unknown. Here, we performed resting-state fMRI followed by fMRI during ME and MI with the dominant hand.

Impact of transcranial direct current stimulation on fatigue in multiple sclerosis.

Purpose: Fatigue is a frequent and difficult to treat symptom affecting patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) with a profound negative impact on quality of life. Fatigue has been associated with functional and structural abnormalities of the frontal cortex, including frontal hypo-activation. The aim of this exploratory study was to assess whether fatigue symptoms can be reduced by excitability-enhancing anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

Transcranial electrical stimulation modifies the neuronal response to psychosocial stress exposure.

Stress is a constant characteristic of everyday life in our society, playing a role in triggering several chronic disorders. Therefore, there is an ongoing need to develop new methods in order to manage stress reactions. The regulatory function of right medial-prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is frequently reported by imaging studies during psychosocial stress situations.

Safety of 5 kHz tACS.

Background: Sinusoidal transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) at 5 kHz applied for 10 min at 1 mA intensity over the hand area of the primary motor cortex (M1) results in sustained changes in cortical excitability as previously demonstrated.

Objective: Here we have assessed safety aspects of this stimulation method by measuring neuron-specific enolase (NSE) levels, examining electroencephalogram (EEG) traces and analyzing anatomical data by using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Methods: Altogether 18 healthy volunteers participated in the study.

Combining functional magnetic resonance imaging with transcranial electrical stimulation.

Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) is a neuromodulatory method with promising potential for basic research and as a therapeutic tool. The most explored type of tES is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), but also transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) and transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) have been shown to affect cortical excitability, behavioral performance and brain activity. Although providing indirect measure of brain activity, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can tell us more about the global effects of stimulation in the whole brain and what is more, on how it modulates functional interactions between brain regions, complementing what is known from electrophysiological methods such as measurement of motor evoked potentials.

High-frequency TRNS reduces BOLD activity during visuomotor learning.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) consist in the application of electrical current of small intensity through the scalp, able to modulate perceptual and motor learning, probably by changing brain excitability. We investigated the effects of these transcranial electrical stimulation techniques in the early and later stages of visuomotor learning, as well as associated brain activity changes using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We applied anodal and cathodal tDCS, low-frequency and high-frequency tRNS (lf-tRNS, 0.