Disease-Modifying Symptomatic Treatment (DMST) Potential of Cannabinoids in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis.

With the recent introduction of a number of highly effective disease-modifying treatments (DMTs) and the resulting almost complete prevention of acute relapses in many patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), the interest of MS clinicians has gradually shifted from relapse prevention to counteraction of disease progression and the treatment of residual symptoms. Targeting the cannabinoid system with nabiximols is an approved and effective strategy for the treatment of spasticity secondary to MS. Recently, the concept of spasticity plus syndrome (SPS) was introduced to account for the evidence that spasticity often appears in MS patients in clusters with other symptoms (such as pain, bladder dysfunction, sleep, and mood disorders), where cannabinoids can also be effective due to their broader action on many immune and neuronal functions.

Unlocking the potential of 'passive' modulation: How sensory stimulation shapes hand and face size.

Knowledge of the body size is intricately tied to multisensory integration processes that rely on the dynamic interplay of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms. Recent years have seen the development of passive sensory stimulation protocols aimed at investigating the modulation of various cognitive functions, primarily inducing perceptual learning and behaviour change without the need for extensive training. Given that reductions in sensory input have been associated with alterations in body size perception, it is reasonable to hypothesize that increasing sensory information through passive sensory stimulation could similarly influence the perception of the size of body parts.

Encoding Manual Dexterity through Modulation of Intrinsic α Band Connectivity.

The human hand possesses both consolidated motor skills and remarkable flexibility in adapting to ongoing task demands. However, the underlying mechanisms by which the brain balances stability and flexibility remain unknown. In the absence of external input or behavior, spontaneous (intrinsic) brain connectivity is thought to represent a prior of stored memories.

Fetal MR Imaging Anatomy of the Transverse Temporal Gyrus (Heschl Gyrus).

Background And Purpose: The human auditory system develops early in fetal life. This retrospective MR imaging study describes the in vivo prenatal anatomic development of the transverse temporal gyrus (Heschl gyrus) site of the primary auditory cortex.

Materials And Methods: Two hundred seventy-two MR imaging studies of the fetal brain (19-39 weeks' gestational age) acquired from a single institution's 1.

Transverse myelitis in children and adults.

Transverse myelitis is a noncompressive myelopathy of inflammatory origin. The causes are broad, ranging from infective or toxic to immuno-mediated etiology. They can be manifestations of systemic diseases, such as sarcoidosis and systemic lupus erythematous, or phenotypes of neuroinflammation; in a portion of cases, the etiology remains unknown, leading to the designation idiopathic.

Sex Differences in Repolarization Markers: Telemonitoring for Chronic Heart Failure Patients.

Unlabelled: Aging and chronic heart failure (CHF) are responsible for the temporal inhomogeneity of the electrocardiogram (ECG) repolarization phase. Recently, some short period repolarization-dispersion parameters have been proposed as markers of acute decompensation and of mortality risk in CHF patients. Some important differences in repolarization between sexes are known, but their impact on ECG markers remains unstudied.

The Spectrum of Neurological and Sensory Abnormalities in Gaucher Disease Patients: A Multidisciplinary Study (SENOPRO).

Gaucher disease (GD) has been increasingly recognized as a continuum of phenotypes with variable neurological and sensory involvement. No study has yet specifically explored the spectrum of neuropsychiatric and sensory abnormalities in GD patients through a multidisciplinary approach. Abnormalities involving the nervous system, including sensory abnormalities, cognitive disturbances, and psychiatric comorbidities, have been identified in GD1 and GD3 patients.

Circulating Extracellular Vesicles: Their Role in Patients with Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) Undergoing EndoVascular Aortic Repair (EVAR).

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a frequent aortic disease. If the diameter of the aorta is larger than 5 cm, an open surgical repair (OSR) or an endovascular aortic repair (EVAR) are recommended. To prevent possible complications (i.

Empowering episodic memory through a model-based egocentric navigational training.

Recent works have proposed that spatial mechanisms in the hippocampal-entorhinal system might have originally developed to represent distances and positions in the physical space and successively evolved to represent experience and memory in the mental space (Bellmund et al. 2018; Bottini and Doeller 2020). Within this phylogenetic continuity hypothesis (Buzsáki and Moser 2013), mechanisms supporting episodic and semantic memory would have evolved from egocentric and allocentric spatial navigation mechanisms, respectively.

Contemporary study of multiple sclerosis disability in South East Wales.

Background: A contemporary understanding of disability evolution in multiple sclerosis (MS) is an essential tool for individual disease management and planning of interventional studies. We have used prospectively collected longitudinal data to analyse disability progression and variation in a British MS cohort.

Methods: Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate hazard of Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) 4.

Selective effects of a brain tumor on the metric representation of the hand: a pre- versus post-surgery comparison.

Body representation disorders are complex, varied, striking, and very disabling in most cases. Deficits of body representation have been described after lesions to multimodal and sensorimotor cortical areas. A few studies have reported the effects of tumors on the representation of the body, but little is known about the changes after tumor resection.

An integrative perspective on the role of touch in the development of intersubjectivity.

Touch concerns a fundamental component of sociality. In this review, we examine the hypothesis that somatomotor development constitutes a crucial psychophysiological element in the ontogeny of intersubjectivity. An interdisciplinary perspective is provided on how the communication channel of touch contributes to the sense of self and extends to the social self.

'The Digital Cardiologist': How Technology Is Changing the Paradigm of Cardiology Training.

In the same way that the practice of cardiology has evolved over the years, so too has the way cardiology fellows in training (FITs) are trained. Propelled by recent advances in technology-catalyzed by COVID-19-and the requirement to adapt age-old methods of both teaching and health care delivery, many aspects, or 'domains', of learning have changed. These include the environments in which FITs work (outpatient clinics, 'on-call' inpatient service) and procedures in which they need clinical competency.

Differentiating solitary brain metastases from high-grade gliomas with MR: comparing qualitative versus quantitative diagnostic strategies.

Purpose: To investigate the diagnostic efficacy of MRI diagnostic algorithms with an ascending automatization, in distinguishing between high-grade glioma (HGG) and solitary brain metastases (SBM).

Methods: 36 patients with histologically proven HGG (n = 18) or SBM (n = 18), matched by size and location were enrolled from a database containing 655 patients. Four different diagnostic algorithms were performed serially to mimic the clinical setting where a radiologist would typically seek out further findings to reach a decision: pure qualitative, analytic qualitative (based on standardized evaluation of tumor features), semi-quantitative (based on perfusion and diffusion cutoffs included in the literature) and a quantitative data-driven algorithm of the perfusion and diffusion parameters.

Brain and behavioral contributions to individual choices in response to affective-cognitive persuasion.

Affective and cognitive information conveyed by persuasive stimuli is evaluated and integrated by individuals according to their behavioral predispositions. However, the neurocognitive structure that supports persuasion based on either affective or cognitive content is poorly understood. Here, we examine the neural and behavioral processes supporting choices based on affective and cognitive persuasion by integrating 4 information processing features: intrinsic brain connectivity, stimulus-evoked brain activity, intrinsic affective-cognitive orientation, and explicit target evaluations.

Intrinsic Shapes of Empathy: Functional Brain Network Topology Encodes Intersubjective Experience and Awareness Traits.

Trait empathy is an essential personality feature in the intricacy of typical social inclinations of individuals. Empathy is likely supported by multilevel neuronal network functioning, whereas local topological properties determine network integrity. In the present functional MRI study (N = 116), we aimed to trace empathic traits to the intrinsic brain network architecture.

Do the Current Guidelines for Heart Failure Diagnosis and Treatment Fit with Clinical Complexity?

Heart failure (HF) is a clinical syndrome defined by specific symptoms and signs due to structural and/or functional heart abnormalities, which lead to inadequate cardiac output and/or increased intraventricular filling pressure. Importantly, HF becomes progressively a multisystemic disease. However, in August 2021, the European Society of Cardiology published the new Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic HF, according to which the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) continues to represent the pivotal parameter for HF patients' evaluation, risk stratification and therapeutic management despite its limitations are well known.

Management of mitral stenosis: a systematic review of clinical practice guidelines and recommendations.

A number of guidelines exist with recommendations for diagnosis and management of mitral stenosis (MS). We systematically reviewed existing guidelines for diagnosis and management of MS, highlighting their similarities and differences, in order to guide clinical decision-making. We searched national and international guidelines in MEDLINE and EMBASE (5/4/2011-5/9/2021), the Guidelines International Network, Guideline Library, National Guideline Clearinghouse, National Library for Health Guidelines Finder, Canadian Medical Association Clinical Practice Guidelines Infobase, and websites of relevant organizations.

Mitral regurgitation management: a systematic review of clinical practice guidelines and recommendations.

Multiple guidelines exist for the diagnosis and management of mitral regurgitation (MR), the second most common valvular heart disease in high-income countries, with recommendations that do not always match. We systematically reviewed guidelines on diagnosis and management of MR, highlighting similarities and differences to guide clinical decision-making. We searched national and international guidelines in MEDLINE and EMBASE (1 June 2010 to 1 September 2021), the Guidelines International Network, National Guideline Clearinghouse, National Library for Health Guidelines Finder, Canadian Medical Association Clinical Practice Guidelines Infobase, and websites of relevant organizations.