Preexisting anticoagulation is an independent predictor of mortality in geriatric trauma patients - a retrospective cohort study.

Introduction: Preexisting anticoagulation is common among geriatric trauma patients. Geriatric trauma patients have a higher risk of mortality compared to younger patients. We sought to evaluate the association of preexisting anticoagulation with mortality in a group of geriatric trauma patients.

Early-Onset of Transthyretin Amyloidosis in a Young Afro-Caribbean Woman With Thr60Ala Mutation.

Transthyretin amyloidosis involves the deposition of transthyretin amyloid fibrils in the body. We report an unusual case of a young Afro-Caribbean woman harboring a Thr60Ala mutation who presented with clinical signs of heart failure and polyneuropathy confirmed with genetic testing and results of an abdominal fat pad biopsy. ().

Aging Does Not Affect Beta Modulation during Reaching Movements.

During movement, modulation of beta power occurs over the sensorimotor areas, with a decrease just before its start (event-related desynchronization, ERD) and a rebound after its end (event-related synchronization, ERS). We have recently found that the depth of ERD-to-ERS modulation increases during practice in a reaching task and the following day decreases to baseline levels. Importantly, the magnitude of the beta modulation increase during practice is highly correlated with the retention of motor skill tested the following day.

Efficacy of intensive multidisciplinary rehabilitation in Parkinson's disease: a randomised controlled study.

Objective: To evaluate whether a 4-week multidisciplinary, aerobic, motor-cognitive and intensive rehabilitation treatment (MIRT) improves the quality of life (QoL) of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), in the short-term and long-term period.

Methods: This is a prospective, parallel-group, single-centre, single-blind, randomised clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02756676).

An Interrupted Time Series Analysis to Determine the Effect of an Electronic Health Record-Based Intervention on Appropriate Screening for Type 2 Diabetes in Urban Primary Care Clinics in New York City.

Objective: To determine the impact of a health system-wide primary care diabetes management system, which included targeted guidelines for type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and prediabetes (dysglycemia) screening, on detection of previously undiagnosed dysglycemia cases.

Research Design And Methods: Intervention included electronic health record (EHR)-based decision support and standardized providers and staff training for using the American Diabetes Association guidelines for dysglycemia screening. Using EHR data, we identified 40,456 adults without T2DM or recent screening with a face-to-face visit (March 2011-December 2013) in five urban clinics.

SEEG assistant: a 3DSlicer extension to support epilepsy surgery.

Background: In the evaluation of Stereo-Electroencephalography (SEEG) signals, the physicist's workflow involves several operations, including determining the position of individual electrode contacts in terms of both relationship to grey or white matter and location in specific brain regions. These operations are (i) generally carried out manually by experts with limited computer support, (ii) hugely time consuming, and (iii) often inaccurate, incomplete, and prone to errors.

Results: In this paper we present SEEG Assistant, a set of tools integrated in a single 3DSlicer extension, which aims to assist neurosurgeons in the analysis of post-implant structural data and hence aid the neurophysiologist in the interpretation of SEEG data.

Striatal Dopaminergic Innervation Regulates Subthalamic Beta-Oscillations and Cortical-Subcortical Coupling during Movements: Preliminary Evidence in Subjects with Parkinson's Disease.

Activation of the basal ganglia has been shown during the preparation and execution of movement. However, the functional interaction of cortical and subcortical brain areas during movement and the relative contribution of dopaminergic striatal innervation remains unclear. We recorded local field potential (LFP) activity from the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and high-density electroencephalography (EEG) signals in four patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) off dopaminergic medication during a multi-joint motor task performed with their dominant and non-dominant hand.

Congruence of Home, Social and Sex Neighborhoods among Men Who Have Sex with Men, NYCM2M Study.

Substantial literature demonstrates the influence of the neighborhood environment on health behaviors and outcomes. But limited research examines on how gay and bisexual men experience and exist in various geographic and virtual spaces and how this relates to their sexual behavior. New York City Men 2 Men (NYCM2M) was a cross-sectional study designed to identify neighborhood-level characteristics within the urban environment that influence sexual risk behaviors, substance use, and depression among men who have sex with men (MSM) living in NYC.

Dose-response effect of smoking status on quality-adjusted life years among U.S. adults aged 65 years and older.

Background: To estimate the impact of smoking on quality-adjusted life years (QALY) for US adults aged 65 years and older.

Methods: Using the 2003-08 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Linked Mortality File, we estimated the mean QALY throughout the remaining lifetime by participants' smoking status as well as smoking intensity and time since cessation.

Results: Never, former and current smokers had a mean QALY of 16.

Does Cognitive Impairment Affect Rehabilitation Outcome in Parkinson's Disease?

Background: The cognitive status is generally considered as a major determinant of rehabilitation outcome in Parkinson's disease (PD). No studies about the effect of cognitive impairment on motor rehabilitation outcomes in PD have been performed before.

Objective: This study is aimed to evaluate the impact of cognitive decline on rehabilitation outcomes in patients with PD.

Initial examination of priming tasks to decrease delay discounting.

Steep discounting of delayed rewards is linked with a variety of unhealthy behaviors that contribute to the major causes of preventable death and disease. Growing evidence suggests that decreases in delay discounting contribute to healthier preferences. This study sought to provide preliminary evidence for the viability of developing a brief priming task to reduce delay discounting in a large, diverse group of individuals.

Multidisciplinary intensive rehabilitation treatment improves sleep quality in Parkinson's disease.

Background: Sleep disturbances are among the most common non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD), greatly interfering with daily activities and diminishing life quality. Pharmacological treatments have not been satisfactory because of side effects and interactions with anti-parkinsonian drugs. While studies have shown that regular exercise improves sleep quality in normal aging, there is no definitive evidence in PD.

Impact of nine chronic conditions for US adults aged 65 years and older: an application of a hybrid estimator of quality-adjusted life years throughout remainder of lifetime.

Purpose: To estimate quality-adjusted life years (QALY) loss due to each of the following nine chronic conditions-depression, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, emphysema, asthma, arthritis, and cancer.

Methods: We ascertained respondents' health-related quality of life scores and mortality status from the 2005 to 2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) with mortality follow-up data through December 31, 2011. We included respondents aged 65 years and older (n = 2380).

Practice changes beta power at rest and its modulation during movement in healthy subjects but not in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Background: PD (Parkinson's disease) is characterized by impairments in cortical plasticity, in beta frequency at rest and in beta power modulation during movement (i.e., event-related ERS [synchronization] and ERD [desynchronization]).

Balance Dysfunction in Parkinson's Disease: The Role of Posturography in Developing a Rehabilitation Program.

Balance dysfunction (BD) in Parkinson's disease (PD) is a disabling symptom, difficult to treat and predisposing to falls. The dopaminergic drugs or deep brain stimulation does not always provide significant improvements of BD and rehabilitative approaches have also failed to restore this condition. In this study, we investigated the suitability of quantitative posturographic indicators to early identify patients that could develop disabling BD.

Movement preparation and bilateral modulation of beta activity in aging and Parkinson's disease.

In previous studies of young subjects performing a reaction-time reaching task, we found that faster reaction times are associated with increased suppression of beta power over primary sensorimotor areas just before target presentation. Here we ascertain whether such beta decrease similarly occurs in normally aging subjects and also in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), where deficits in movement execution and abnormalities of beta power are usually present. We found that in both groups, beta power decreased during the motor task in the electrodes over the two primary sensorimotor areas.

Sensory abnormalities in focal hand dystonia and non-invasive brain stimulation.

It has been proposed that synchronous and convergent afferent input arising from repetitive motor tasks may play an important role in driving the maladaptive cortical plasticity seen in focal hand dystonia (FHD). This hypothesis receives support from several sources. First, it has been reported that in subjects with FHD, paired associative stimulation produces an abnormal increase in corticospinal excitability, which was not confined to stimulated muscles.

TMS enhances retention of a motor skill in Parkinson's disease.

Background: In Parkinson's disease (PD), skill retention is poor, even when acquisition rate is generally preserved. Recent work in normal subjects suggests that 5 Hz-repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (5Hz-rTMS) may induce phenomena of long-term potentiation at the cortical level.

Objective/hypothesis: We thus verified whether, in PD, 5Hz-rTMS enhances retention of a visuo-motor skill that involves the activity of the right posterior parietal cortex.

Protracted exercise without overt neuromuscular fatigue influences cortical excitability.

The authors' aim was to determine the cortical mechanisms that underlie the transition from effective performance to its disruption. They thus used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to study changes of corticospinal excitability after a motor exercise that did not produce overt or perceived neuromuscular fatigue. Forty-four subjects performed either 5 or 10 min of repetitive finger movements paced by tones at 2 Hz, a frequency below the spontaneous movement rate.

n-3 fatty acids prevent impairment of neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity in B-cell activating factor (BAFF) transgenic mice.

Objective: Autoimmune-prone B-cell activating factor transgenic mice, a mouse model of systemic lupus erythematosus and Sjögren's syndrome exhibit neuroinflammation, anxiety-like phenotype, deficit in adult hippocampal neurogenesis and impaired neurogenesis-dependent and neurogenesis-independent dentate gyrus long-term potentiation. Given that n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids regulate hippocampal plasticity and inflammatory responses, we investigated whether n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids-enriched diet might prevent age-dependent hippocampal changes in B-cell activating factor transgenic mice.

Methods: B-cell activating factor transgenic mice were fed for 12 weeks with either n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids-enriched or control diet and we tested the effect of this dietary supplementation on hippocampal inflammation, progenitor cell proliferation and neurogenesis-dependent and neurogenesis-independent long-term potentiation.

Basal ganglia and kinematics modulation: insights from Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.

Movement kinematic variables related to force production can be modulated to respond appropriately to different contexts. We previously showed that in a choice-reaction time and a predictable timed-response task, normal subjects perform reaching movements to the same targets with two different kinematic patterns, a marker of flexibility. Here, we used the two tasks to determine whether basal ganglia are involved in the selection and modulation of movement kinematics and therefore in flexible force production.

Attention modulation regulates both motor and non-motor performance: a high-density EEG study in Parkinson's disease.

We have previously shown that, in early stages of Parkinson's disease (PD), patients with higher reaction times are also more impaired in visual sequence learning, suggesting that movement preparation shares resources with the learning of visuospatial sequences. Here, we ascertained whether, in patients with PD, the pattern of the neural correlates of attentional processes of movement planning predict sequence learning and working memory abilities. High density Electroencephalography (EEG, 256 electrodes) was recorded in 19 patients with PD performing reaching movements in a choice reaction time paradigm.

Physiologic gating properties of unitary cardiac L-type Ca2+ channels.

The contraction of adult mammalian ventricular cardiomyocytes is triggered by the influx of Ca(2+) ions through sarcolemmal L-type Ca(2+) channels (LCCs). However, the gating properties of unitary LCCs under physiologic conditions have remained elusive. Towards this end, we investigated the voltage-dependence of the gating kinetics of unitary LCCs, with a physiologic concentration of Ca(2+) ions permeating the channel.

Ca(2+)-dependent components of inactivation of unitary cardiac L-type Ca(2+) channels.

A Ca(2+) ion-dependent inactivation (CDI) of L-type Ca(2+) channels (LCC) is vital in limiting and shaping local Ca(2+) ion signalling in a variety of excitable cell types. However, under physiological conditions the unitary LCC properties that underlie macroscopic inactivation are unclear. Towards this end, we have probed the gating kinetics of individual cardiac LCCs recorded with a physiological Ca(2+) ion concentration (2 mM) permeating the channel, and in the absence of channel agonists.

The serial reaction time task revisited: a study on motor sequence learning with an arm-reaching task.

With a series of novel arm-reaching tasks, we have shown that visuomotor sequence learning encompasses the acquisition of the order of sequence elements, and the ability to combine them in a single, skilled behavior. The first component, which is mostly declarative, is reflected by changes in movement onset time (OT); the second, which occurs without subject's awareness, is measured by changes in kinematic variables, including movement time (MT). Key-press-based serial reaction time tasks (SRTT) have been used to investigate sequence learning and results interpreted as indicative of the implicit acquisition of the sequence order.