Different effects of anterior temporal lobectomy and selective amygdalohippocampectomy on verbal memory performance of patients with epilepsy.

The advantage of selective amygdalohippocampectomy (SAH) over anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) for the treatment of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) remains controversial. Because ATL is more extensive and involves the lateral and medial parts of the temporal lobe, it may be predicted that its impact on memory is more important than SAH, which involves resection of medial temporal structures only. However, several studies do not support this assumption.

Experiences, attitudes, and needs related to sexuality and service delivery in individuals with traumatic brain injury.

Objective: To explore the experiences, attitudes, and needs related to service delivery regarding sexuality issues in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Methods: Community-dwelling individuals with TBI having completed a post-acute TBI rehabilitation program. The TBI sample consisted of 16 men (42.

Behavioral evidence for a functional link between low- and mid-level visual perception in the autism spectrum.

Background: Most investigations of visuo-perceptual abilities in the Autism Spectrum (AS) are level-specific, using tasks that selectively solicit either lower- (i.e., spatial frequency sensitivity), mid- (i.

Long-Lasting Crossmodal Cortical Reorganization Triggered by Brief Postnatal Visual Deprivation.

Animal and human studies have demonstrated that transient visual deprivation early in life, even for a very short period, permanently alters the response properties of neurons in the visual cortex and leads to corresponding behavioral visual deficits. While it is acknowledged that early-onset and longstanding blindness leads the occipital cortex to respond to non-visual stimulation, it remains unknown whether a short and transient period of postnatal visual deprivation is sufficient to trigger crossmodal reorganization that persists after years of visual experience. In the present study, we characterized brain responses to auditory stimuli in 11 adults who had been deprived of all patterned vision at birth by congenital cataracts in both eyes until they were treated at 9 to 238 days of age.

Caregiving in Dementia and its Impact on Psychological Functioning and Health-Related Quality of Life: Findings from a Colombian Sample.

Existing published studies about health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in caregivers of dementia patients living in Latin American countries are very limited. However, cultural aspects, personal values, and social structure may affect the way caregivers experience their role in different societies. The current study investigated the relationship between HRQOL and psychological factors using a cross-sectional design.

Attentional Capacity Limits Gap Detection during Concurrent Sound Segregation.

Detecting a brief silent interval (i.e., a gap) is more difficult when listeners perceive two concurrent sounds rather than one in a sound containing a mistuned harmonic in otherwise in-tune harmonics.

Excitability of the motor system: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study on singing and speaking.

The perception of movements is associated with increased activity in the human motor cortex, which in turn may underlie our ability to understand actions, as it may be implicated in the recognition, understanding and imitation of actions. Here, we investigated the involvement and lateralization of the primary motor cortex (M1) in the perception of singing and speech. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied independently for both hemispheres over the mouth representation of the motor cortex in healthy participants while they watched 4-s audiovisual excerpts of singers producing a 2-note ascending interval (singing condition) or 4-s audiovisual excerpts of a person explaining a proverb (speech condition).

Is temporal summation of pain and spinal nociception altered during normal aging?

This study examines the effect of normal aging on temporal summation (TS) of pain and the nociceptive flexion reflex (RIII). Two groups of healthy volunteers, young and elderly, received transcutaneous electrical stimulation applied to the right sural nerve to assess pain and the nociceptive flexion reflex (RIII-reflex). Stimulus intensity was adjusted individually to 120% of RIII-reflex threshold, and shocks were delivered as a single stimulus or as a series of 5 stimuli to assess TS at 5 different frequencies (0.

Space and time in the sighted and blind.

Across many cultures people conceptualize time as extending along a horizontal Mental Time Line (MTL). This spatial mapping of time has been shown to depend on experience with written text, and may also depend on other graphic conventions such as graphs and calendars. All of this information is typically acquired visually, suggesting that visual experience may play an important role in the development of the MTL.

Multisensory integration and child neurodevelopment.

A considerable number of cognitive processes depend on the integration of multisensory information. The brain integrates this information, providing a complete representation of our surrounding world and giving us the ability to react optimally to the environment. Infancy is a period of great changes in brain structure and function that are reflected by the increase of processing capacities of the developing child.

Neuropsychological functioning in children with temporal lobe epilepsy and hippocampal atrophy without mesial temporal sclerosis: a distinct clinical entity?

Unilateral hippocampal atrophy (HA) is considered as a precursor of mesial temporal sclerosis (MTS) in some patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. However, in other cases, it has been suggested that HA without MTS may constitute a distinct epileptic entity. Hippocampal atrophy without MTS was defined as HA without T2-weighted hyperintensity, loss of internal architecture, or associated lesion seen on the MRI data.

Tracking the evolution of crossmodal plasticity and visual functions before and after sight restoration.

Visual deprivation leads to massive reorganization in both the structure and function of the occipital cortex, raising crucial challenges for sight restoration. We tracked the behavioral, structural, and neurofunctional changes occurring in an early and severely visually impaired patient before and 1.5 and 7 mo after sight restoration with magnetic resonance imaging.

Visual experience influences the interactions between fingers and numbers.

Though a clear interaction between finger and number representations has been demonstrated, what drives the development of this intertwining remains unclear. Here we tested early blind, late blind and sighted control participants in two counting tasks, each performed under three different conditions: a resting condition, a condition requiring hands movements and a condition requiring feet movements. In the resting condition, every sighted and late blind spontaneously used their fingers, while the majority of early blind did not.

An early origin for detailed perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder: biased sensitivity for high-spatial frequency information.

Autistics demonstrate superior performances on several visuo-spatial tasks where local or detailed information processing is advantageous. Altered spatial filtering properties at an early level of visuo-spatial analysis may be a plausible perceptual origin for such detailed perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder. In this study, contrast sensitivity for both luminance and texture-defined vertically-oriented sine-wave gratings were measured across a range of spatial frequencies (0.

Serial processing in primary and secondary somatosensory cortex: A DCM analysis of human fMRI data in response to innocuous and noxious electrical stimulation.

The anatomy of the somatosensory system allows both serial and parallel information flow but the conditions involving each mode of processing is a matter of debate. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, cutaneous electrical stimulation was applied to human volunteers at three intensities (low-innocuous, moderate-noxious and high-noxious) to investigate interactions between contralateral primary and secondary somatosensory cortices (S1c and S2c), and between contralateral and ipsilateral S2 (S2c and S2i), using dynamic causal modeling (DCM). Our results are consistent with serial processing with a key role of the direct input to S1c for all three intensity levels.

The conditioning and extinction of fear in youths: what's sex got to do with it?

Adult work shows differences in emotional processing influenced by sexes of both the viewer and expresser of facial expressions. We investigated this in 120 healthy youths (57 boys; 10-17 years old) randomly assigned to fear conditioning and extinction tasks using either neutral male or female faces as the conditioned threat and safety cues, and a fearful face paired with a shrieking scream as the unconditioned stimulus. Fear ratings and skin conductance responses (SCRs) were assessed.

Neuromuscular adaptations predict functional disability independently of clinical pain and psychological factors in patients with chronic non-specific low back pain.

Patients with chronic low back pain exhibit characteristics such as clinical pain, psychological symptoms and neuromuscular adaptations. The purpose of this study was to determine the independent contribution of clinical pain, psychological factors and neuromuscular adaptations to disability in patients with chronic low back pain. Clinical pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, fear-avoidance beliefs, anxiety, neuromuscular adaptations to chronic pain and neuromuscular responses to experimental pain were assessed in 52 patients with chronic low back pain.

Olfactory exposure to males, including men, causes stress and related analgesia in rodents.

We found that exposure of mice and rats to male but not female experimenters produces pain inhibition. Male-related stimuli induced a robust physiological stress response that results in stress-induced analgesia. This effect could be replicated with T-shirts worn by men, bedding material from gonadally intact and unfamiliar male mammals, and presentation of compounds secreted from the human axilla.

Masking of a first target in the attentional blink attenuates the P3 to the first target and delays the P3 to the second target.

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the decline in report accuracy of a second target (T2) when presented shortly after a first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of distractors. It is known that masking T1 increases the magnitude of the AB, and masking a single target (equivalent to T1) in a RSVP stream attenuates the P3 to the target in correct trials. The major purpose of the present study was to clarify how these two effects may be integrated.

Reduced pain inhibition is associated with reduced cognitive inhibition in healthy aging.

The analgesic effect of heterotopic noxious counter-stimulation (HNCS; "pain inhibits pain") has been shown to decrease in older persons, while some neuropsychological studies have suggested a reduction in cognitive inhibition with normal aging. Taken together, these findings may reflect a generalized reduction in inhibitory processes. The present study assessed whether the decline in the efficacy of pain inhibition processes is associated with decreased cognitive inhibition in older persons.

Luminance- and texture-defined information processing in school-aged children with autism.

According to the complexity-specific hypothesis, the efficacy with which individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) process visual information varies according to the extensiveness of the neural network required to process stimuli. Specifically, adults with ASD are less sensitive to texture-defined (or second-order) information, which necessitates the implication of several cortical visual areas. Conversely, the sensitivity to simple, luminance-defined (or first-order) information, which mainly relies on primary visual cortex (V1) activity, has been found to be either superior (static material) or intact (dynamic material) in ASD.

The ventriloquist in periphery: impact of eccentricity-related reliability on audio-visual localization.

The relative reliability of separate sensory estimates influences the way they are merged into a unified percept. We investigated how eccentricity-related changes in reliability of auditory and visual stimuli influence their integration across the entire frontal space. First, we surprisingly found that despite a strong decrease in auditory and visual unisensory localization abilities in periphery, the redundancy gain resulting from the congruent presentation of audio-visual targets was not affected by stimuli eccentricity.

Assessment of the caudate nucleus and its relation to route learning in both congenital and late blind individuals.

Background: In the absence of visual input, the question arises as to how complex spatial abilities develop and how the brain adapts to the absence of this modality. As such, the aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship between visual status and an important brain structure with a well established role in spatial cognition and navigation, the caudate nucleus. We conducted a volumetric analysis of the caudate nucleus in congenitally and late blind individuals, as well as in matched sighted control subjects.

Motor system alterations in retired former athletes: the role of aging and concussion history.

Background: Retired athletes with a history of sports concussions experience cognitive and motor declines with aging, and the risk of severe neurodegenerative conditions is magnified in this population. The present study investigated the effects of aging on motor system metabolism and function in former university-level athletes who sustained their last concussion several decades prior to testing.

Methods: To test the hypothesis that age and remote concussions induce functional as well as metabolic alterations of the motor system, we used proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy to detect metabolic abnormalities in the primary motor cortex and the serial reaction time task (SRTT) to evaluate motor learning.

Pain modulation induced by respiration: phase and frequency effects.

The voluntary control of respiration is used as a common means to regulate pain and emotions and is fundamental to various relaxation and meditation techniques. The aim of the present study was to examine how breathing frequency and phase affect pain perception, spinal nociceptive activity (RIII-reflex) and brain activity (scalp somatosensory-evoked potentials - SEP's). In 20 healthy volunteers, painful electric shocks individually adjusted to 120% of the RIII-reflex threshold were delivered to the sural nerve near the end of inspiration or expiration phases, during three cued-breathing conditions: (1) slow breathing (0.