Subject-Specific Activation of Central Respiratory Centers during Breath-Holding Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Background: Voluntary breath-holding (BH) triggers responses from central neural control and respiratory centers in order to restore breathing. Such responses can be observed using functional MRI (fMRI).

Objectives: We used this paradigm in healthy volunteers with the view to develop a biomarker that could be used to investigate disorders of the central control of breathing at the individual patient level.

fMRI studies evaluating central respiratory control in humans.

A plethora of neural centers in the central nervous system control the fundamental respiratory pattern. This control is ensured by neurons that act as pacemakers, modulating activity through chemical control driven by changes in the O/CO balance. Most of the respiratory neural centers are located in the brainstem, but difficult to localize on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) due to their small size, lack of visually-detectable borders with neighboring areas, and significant physiological noise hampering detection of its activity with functional MRI (fMRI).

Epileptogenicity in tuberous sclerosis complex: A stereoelectroencephalographic study.

Objective: In tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC)-associated drug-resistant epilepsy, the optimal invasive electroencephalographic (EEG) and operative approach remains unclear. We examined the role of stereo-EEG in TSC and used stereo-EEG data to investigate tuber and surrounding cortex epileptogenicity.

Methods: We analyzed 18 patients with TSC who underwent stereo-EEG (seven adults).

Atonic seizures in children with surgically remediable epilepsy: a motor system seizure phenotype?

Atonic seizures are common in some epileptic syndromes beginning in infancy or early childhood but they are rarely described in epilepsy with focal seizures of structural aetiology. We aimed to characterize the electroclinical features of atonic seizures in surgically remediable paediatric patients and to study the spatiotemporal organization of the underlying epileptogenic networks. We retrospectively analysed two consecutive, longitudinally evaluated and surgically treated paediatric patients presenting with atonic seizures as a manifestation of pharmacoresistant epilepsy of structural aetiology, evidenced by scalp- and stereotactic intracerebral video-EEG-recordings.