[Semantic memory training in Alzheimer's disease].

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of semantic stimulation of Alzheimer's patients on semantic memory comparatively to psychological support. We conducted semantic training with two target categories (musical instruments and human actions), because these concepts were massively failed in previous data collected in Alzheimer's disease. Ten patients (57-78 year old, MMSE scores from 17 to 26) were divided in an experimental and a control group where patients received psychological support instead of semantic cognitive training.

Multidimensional scaling of emotional responses to music in patients with temporal lobe resection.

The present study investigated emotional responses to music by using multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis in patients with right or left medial temporal lobe (MTL) lesions and matched normal controls (NC). Participants were required to evaluate emotional dissimilarities of nine musical excerpts that were selected to express graduated changes along the valence and arousal dimensions. For this purpose, they rated dissimilarity between pairs of stimuli on an eight-point scale and the resulting matrices were submitted to an MDS analysis.

Effects of combined exenatide and pioglitazone therapy on hepatic fat content in type 2 diabetes.

We examined the effects of combined pioglitazone (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPAR-γ) agonist) and exenatide (GLP-1 receptor agonist) therapy on hepatic fat content and plasma adiponectin levels in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Twenty-one T2DM patients (age = 52 ± 3 years, BMI = 32.0 ± 1.

Seasonal influenza vaccination coverage in France during two influenza seasons (2007 and 2008) and during a context of pandemic influenza A(H1N1) in 2009.

Objectives: To measure the seasonal influenza vaccination coverage rate (VCR) in France in 2009, year of the A(H1N1) influenza pandemic, by age and target disease and compare it with the VCR for the 2007 and 2008 influenza seasons.

Method: At the beginning of each annual seasonal vaccination campaign, the National Health Insurance, covering 86% of the French population, sends free influenza vaccination vouchers to at-risk beneficiaries aged under 65 suffering from diverse chronic diseases and to all individuals aged 65 and over (around 11 million). Vaccination is estimated from refund claims registered in the National Health Insurance Information System.

Agnosic or semantic impairment in very mild Alzheimer's disease?

The present study investigated object recognition impairment and the existence of category effects in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease. A battery of tests was designed to assess the deterioration of semantic memory and/or the existence of agnosia by evaluating visual and auditory naming, knowledge of structural descriptions (pre-semantic representation of an object within each perceptual system) and conceptual knowledge. The group of Alzheimer's patients were impaired in all experimental tests as compared to healthy participants.

Are international and American graduates equally ACGME competent? Results of a pilot study.

Background: Despite a substantial proportion of international medical graduates (IMG) matching to U.S. programs in Internal Medicine, little is known about their readiness in the six medical competencies compared to graduates of U.

[Epilepsy surgery: when thinking about? Who are the good candidates?].

Epilepsy surgery concerns any patient with pharmacoresistant partial epilepsy, responsible for disability. Children and adult patients can be candidates for epilepsy surgery. A presurgical evaluation, adapted to each patient, must identify the most precisely the cortical area, where the seizures originate, using converging data: the clinical and electroencephalographic semiology of the seizures, the structural and sometimes functional brain imagings, and evaluate if the removal of the epileptogenic focus may induce a neurological or cognitive deficit, using neuropsychological tests and sometimes functional brain imagings.

Evaluation of the agreement between guidelines and initial antihypertensive drug treatment using a national health care reimbursement database.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: To test the agreement between guidelines for the management of hypertension and medical practices while avoiding frequent limitations such as the use of non-representative samples of practitioners and self-reporting of their practices over a short period of time.

Methods: The characteristics of initial antihypertensive drug treatment in a large representative sample of the French population aged 50-80 (n = 17 855) were collected from a national health care reimbursement database and compared with national guidelines over a 5-year period.

Results: Major discrepancies are observed including the use of non-recommended drug classes such as loop and potassium sparing diuretics alone or in association and the absence of distinction between patients according to their age.

[In search of the musical brain].

The emotional power of music opens novel prospects in the field of affective neurosciences. To clarify the neurobiological substrate of emotions brought by music, we adopted an integrative approach, which combines neuropsychology, brain imaging and electrophysiology (intracranial depth electrode recordings). The results of a series of studies carried out in patients with focal brain lesions allow to describe the involvement of different temporal lobe regions and, in particular, of the amygdala in these emotional judgments before discussing the therapeutic benefits of music to handle Alzheimer's disease.

Sodium-calcium exchanger and lipid rafts in pig coronary artery smooth muscle.

Pig coronary artery smooth muscle expresses, among many other proteins, Na+-Ca²+-exchanger NCX1 and sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca²+ pump SERCA2. NCX1 has been proposed to play a role in refilling the sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca²+ pool suggesting a functional linkage between the two proteins. We hypothesized that this functional linkage may require close apposition of SERCA2 and NCX1 involving regions of plasma membrane like lipid rafts.

Impaired recognition of fear in voices and reduced anxiety after unilateral temporal lobe resection.

It has been reported that bilateral amygdala damage in humans compromises the recognition of fear and anger in nonverbal vocalizations (Scott et al., 1997). We addressed the possibility that unilateral temporal lobe damage might be sufficient to impair fear recognition in voices.

Television tip-over head injuries in children.

Head injuries caused by television (TV) sets falling on small children are becoming frequent in India with increasing sales of TV sets. This report describes television tip-over injuries in eight children aged 14 months to 6 years. Symptoms and findings were varied, from only swelling of the eyes to coma.

Ectopic corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) syndrome from metastatic small cell carcinoma: a case report and review of the literature.

Background: Cushing's Syndrome (CS) which is caused by isolated corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) production, rather than adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) production, is extremely rare.

Methods: We describe the clinical presentation, course, laboratory values and pathologic findings of a patient with isolated ectopic CRH causing CS. We review the literature of the types of tumors associated with this unusual syndrome and the behavior of these tumors by endocrine testing.

The effect of musical experience on emotional self-reports and psychophysiological responses to dissonance.

To study the influence of musical education on emotional reactions to dissonance, we examined self-reports and physiological responses to dissonant and consonant musical excerpts in listeners with low (LE: n=15) and high (HE: n=13) musical experience. The results show that dissonance induces more unpleasant feelings and stronger physiological responses in HE than in LE participants, suggesting that musical education reinforces aversion to dissonance. Skin conductance (SCR) and electromyographic (EMG) signals were analyzed according to a defense cascade model, which takes into account two successive time windows corresponding to orienting and defense responses.

Postoperative recovery of hippocampal contralateral diffusivity in medial temporal lobe epilepsy correlates with memory functions.

This study aimed at determining if the recovery of mean diffusivity (MD) in the contralateral non sclerotic hippocampus is correlated with a change in memory outcome after surgery in patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). Verbal and non-verbal memory scores and MD were assessed in 23 patients with MTLE before and after surgical treatment of epilepsy. The recovery of MD in the left hippocampus was correlated with the performance on verbal memory tests, and the recovery of MD in all patients was correlated with the performance on non-verbal memory tests.

Evaluation of non-inferiority of intradermal versus adjuvanted seasonal influenza vaccine using two serological techniques: a randomised comparative study.

Background: Although seasonal influenza vaccine is effective in the elderly, immune responses to vaccination are lower in the elderly than in younger adults. Strategies to optimise responses to vaccination in the elderly include using an adjuvanted vaccine or using an intradermal vaccination route. The immunogenicity of an intradermal seasonal influenza vaccine was compared with that of an adjuvanted vaccine in the elderly.

Different spatial memory systems are involved in small- and large-scale environments: evidence from patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.

Recent reports show that humans and animals do not acquire information about routes and object locations in the same way. In spatial memory, a specific sub-system is hypothesized to be involved in encoding, storing and recalling navigational information, and it is segregated from the sub-system devoted to small-scale environment. We assessed this hypothesis in a sample of patients treated surgically for intractable temporal lobe epilepsy.

Unusual presentation of 42 foreign bodies in a child's maxilla.

The diagnosis of foreign bodies (such as radiolucent bristles) in the maxillary sinus, particularly in a child, is difficult. We report an unusual case of a 9-year-old boy who presented with 42 bristles in his left maxillary sinus. The presence of these foreign bodies was noted only during operation for removal of nasal polyps.

Functional MR imaging or Wada test: which is the better predictor of individual postoperative memory outcome?

Purpose: To retrospectively determine whether blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging can aid prediction of postoperative memory changes in epileptic patients after temporal lobe surgery.

Materials And Methods: This study was approved by the local ethics committee, and informed consent was obtained from all patients. Data were analyzed from 25 patients (12 women, 13 men; age range, 19-52 years) with refractory epilepsy in whom temporal lobe surgery was performed after they underwent preoperative functional MR imaging, the Wada test, and neuropsychological testing.

The relationship of lyrics and tunes in the processing of unfamiliar songs: a functional magnetic resonance adaptation study.

The cognitive relationship between lyrics and tunes in song is currently under debate, with some researchers arguing that lyrics and tunes are represented as separate components, while others suggest that they are processed in integration. The present study addressed this issue by means of a functional magnetic resonance adaptation paradigm during passive listening to unfamiliar songs. The repetition and variation of lyrics and/or tunes in blocks of six songs was crossed in a 2 x 2 factorial design to induce selective adaptation for each component.

Lactic acid bacteria as adjuvants for sublingual allergy vaccines.

We compared immunomodulatory properties of 11 strains of lactic acid bacteria as well as their capacity to enhance sublingual immunotherapy efficacy in a murine asthma model. Two types of bacterial strains were identified, including: (i) potent inducers of IL-12p70 and IL-10 in dendritic cells, supporting IFN-gamma and IL-10 production in CD4+ T cells such as Lactobacillus helveticus; (ii) pure Th1 inducers such as L. casei.

Proximity of Na+ -Ca2+ -exchanger and sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ pump in pig coronary artery smooth muscle: fluorescence microscopy.

Pig coronary artery smooth muscle expresses the Na(+)-Ca(2+)-exchanger NCX1 and the sarco/endoplasmic reticulum (SER) Ca(2+) pump SERCA2. NCX has been proposed to play a role in refilling the SER Ca(2+) pool. Caveolae may also direct Ca(2+) traffic during cell signaling.