Background: Both physical and cognitive impairments are common in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). Performing a cognitive task while walking (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Cognitive impairment is a core symptom that profoundly impacts the lives of people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). Since the existing disease modifying therapies can only stabilize, but not actively treat, cognition in PwMS, there is an unmet need to expand approaches to treat these cognitive symptoms. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) permits frequency-specific entrainment of neural oscillations intrinsic to cognitive activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCognitive impairment (CI) has been recognized as one of the core multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms that profoundly impact lives of people with MS (PwMS). Clinical trials have begun to focus on cognition as a primary or secondary outcome, but translating improvements in cognitive testing scores to functioning in the real world is difficult. Performance-based functional assessments and virtual reality (VR) assessments, which incorporate real-world challenges, have been proposed as a way to better assess functional cognition (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) transition from oral sphingosine-1-receptor (S1P) modulators to anti-CD20 therapies for several circumstances. Optimal timing of this transition is uncertain, given competing concerns of rebound disease activity and ensuring immune reconstitution. The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship between inflammatory activity and the transition period from fingolimod to anti-CD20 therapies in a real-world MS cohort.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJMIR Rehabil Assist Technol
March 2022
Background: Loss of fine motor skills is observed in many neurological diseases, and remote monitoring assessments can aid in early diagnosis and intervention. Hand function can be regularly assessed to monitor loss of fine motor skills in people with central nervous system disorders; however, there are challenges to in-clinic assessments. Remotely assessing hand function could facilitate monitoring and supporting of early diagnosis and intervention when warranted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMult Scler J Exp Transl Clin
October 2021
Background: Sleep disturbances are commonly reported by people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). However, optimal management of sleep disturbances is uncertain, and objective studies of sleep quality in PwMS are scarce.
Objectives: To determine the effect of exogenous melatonin on sleep quality and sleep disturbances in PwMS.
Background: Noninvasive transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) research has been plagued with inconsistent effects. Recent work has suggested neuroanatomical and neurophysiological variability may alter tES efficacy. However, direct evidence is limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe study aimed to evaluate the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on cognition, mood disturbance, pain, and fatigue in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). A literature search was performed on articles published between January 1990 and May 2020 in Pubmed, Medline, and Web of Science using the following keywords and their abbreviation in combinations: multiple sclerosis and transcranial direct current stimulation. Mean effect size (ES) and 95% confidence interval were calculated for each domain of interest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMult Scler J Exp Transl Clin
February 2021
Background: Teleneurology for multiple sclerosis (MS) care was considered feasible, but utilization was limited.
Objective: To describe how the existing teleneurology populations at two academic MS Centers changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we captured all in-person and teleneurology visits at two academic MS Centers between January 2019 and April 2020.
Background: In persons with multiple sclerosis (MS), the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) is the criterion standard for assessing disability, but its in-person nature constrains patient participation in research and clinical assessments.
Objective: The aim of this study was to develop and validate a scalable, electronic, unsupervised patient-reported EDSS (ePR-EDSS) that would capture MS-related disability across the spectrum of severity.
Methods: We enrolled 136 adult MS patients, split into a preliminary testing Cohort 1 ( = 50), and a validation Cohort 2 ( = 86), which was evenly distributed across EDSS groups.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform
October 2020
Synchronizing movements with events in the surrounding environment is a ubiquitous aspect of behavior. Experiments studying multimodal integration and rhythmic synchronization tend to focus on how bimodal (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterised by motor abnormalities. Many non-demented patients with PD have cognitive impairment especially in executive functions. Using magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recording combined with event-related desynchronisation/synchronisation (ERD/ERS) analysis, we investigated cortical executive functions during a Go/NoGo task in PD patients and matched healthy subjects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: We have previously demonstrated that transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) can generate positive effects on multitasking performance and associated neurophysiological measures when it is applied with anti-phase theta band stimulation across bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and a short (1-min) inter-session interval (ISI). However, it is unclear how altering the phase of stimulation and the duration of the ISI might impact positive tACS effects. Here, we investigated the role of tACS parameters in engendering performance improvements by manipulating these two stimulation parameters (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultitasking is associated with the generation of stimulus-locked theta (4-7 Hz) oscillations arising from prefrontal cortex (PFC). Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that influences endogenous brain oscillations. Here, we investigate whether applying alternating current stimulation within the theta frequency band would affect multitasking performance, and explore tACS effects on neurophysiological measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParoxysmal kinesigenic dyskinesia (PKD) is a rare group of hyperkinetic movement disorders characterized by brief attacks of choreoathetosis or dystonia. To clarify the alterations of the functional connectivity within the somatosensory network in PKD patients, magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses to paired median-nerve electrical stimulation were recorded in 10 PKD patients treated by carbamazepine or oxcarbamazepine and 22 age-matched controls. In patients, MEG recordings were obtained during drug-on and -off periods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been proposed to play an important role in neural processes that underlie multitasking performance. However, this claim is underexplored in terms of direct causal evidence.
Objective: The current study aimed to delineate the causal involvement of the DLPFC during multitasking by modulating neural activity with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) prior to engagement in a demanding multitasking paradigm.
The study aimed to evaluate the effects of noninvasive brain stimulation on cognitive function in healthy older adults and patients with Alzheimer's disease. A comprehensive literature search was performed on noninvasive stimulation studies published from January 1990 to November 2014 in Pubmed and Web of Science. Fourteen articles with a total of 331 participants were identified as studies with healthy older adults, and the mean effect size and 95% confidence interval were estimated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been used to elucidate the altered balance between excitatory and inhibitory circuits in the motor cortex in epilepsy; however, TMS could not well assess excitability changes beyond the motor cortex. This study aimed to address the spatial profile of cortical excitability changes in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) by using TMS and magnetoencephalography (MEG).
Methods: Eighteen patients with TLE and 18 healthy control subjects were recruited.
Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder accompanied by a degradation of dopaminergic receptors. It is evident that dopaminergic dysfunction leads to attention deterioration. However, little is known about the functional integrity of involuntary attention processing in patients with HD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study investigated the neuromagnetic activities of self-paced finger lifting task and electrical median nerve stimulation in ten writer's cramp patients and fourteen control subjects. The event-related de/synchronizations (ERD/ERS) of beta-band activity levels were evaluated and the somatosensory cortical activity levels were analyzed using equivalent-current dipole modeling. No significant difference between the patients and control subjects was found in the electrical stimulation-induced beta ERS and electrical evoked somatosensory cortical responses.
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