Pain sensitivity is associated with general attitudes towards pain: Development and validation of a new instrument for pain research and clinical application.

Background: With regard to attitudes towards pain, many questionnaires have been developed. Although undoubtedly useful, they were specifically designed for the use in chronic pain and are less suitable for the assessment in the general population. The purpose of the present paper was to develop a measure for the assessment of general attitudes towards pain applicable in the general population, regardless of clinical condition, and to test its psychometric properties.

Month-of-birth-effect in multiple sclerosis in Austria.

Background: The month-of-birth-effect (MoBE) describes the finding that multiple sclerosis (MS) patients seem to have been born significantly more frequently in spring, with a rise in May, and significantly less often in autumn and winter with the fewest births in November.

Objectives: To analyse if the MoBE can also be found in the Austrian MS population, and if so, whether the pattern is similar to the reported pattern in Canada, United Kingdom, and some Scandinavian countries.

Methods: The data of 7886 MS patients in Austria were compared to all live births in Austria from 1940 to 2010, that is, 7.

Pompe disease in Austria: clinical, genetic and epidemiological aspects.

In this study, we performed a survey of infantile and late-onset Pompe disease (IOPD and LOPD) in Austria. Paediatric and neuromuscular centres were contacted to provide a set of anonymized clinical and genetic data of patients with IOPD and LOPD. The number of patients receiving enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) was obtained from the pharmaceutical company providing alglucosidase alfa.

Mental practice improves hand function after hemiparetic stroke.

Purpose: In a multiple baseline design, we tested the hypothesis that imagery of finger movements is a specific strategy to improve hand function.

Methods: The effect of mental training of sequential finger movements (n=6) on hand function was compared to the repetitive execution of the same movements (n=6) and conventional physical therapy (n=5) in 17 patients after their first hemiparetic stroke. The behavioral outcome measures consisted of peak force of the pinch grip using a force transducer and manipulation functions of the upper extremity (Jebsen-test).

Post-lesional cerebral reorganisation: evidence from functional neuroimaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Reorganisation of cerebral representations has been hypothesised to underlie the recovery from ischaemic brain infarction. The mechanisms can be investigated non-invasively in the human brain using functional neuroimaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Functional neuroimaging showed that reorganisation is a dynamic process beginning after stroke manifestation.

A mental route to motor learning: improving trajectorial kinematics through imagery training.

There are contrasting reports upon the level of effectiveness of motor imagery in learning new motor skills, but there is general consensus that motor imagery can lead to improvements in performance, especially in combination with physical practice. In the present study we examined the effectiveness of motor imagery in the acquisition of movement invariants in two grapho-motor trajectorial learning tasks with differing visuospatial components: 'Ideogram drawing' and 'connecting circles'. Two subject groups were studied: An imagery group, which underwent 10 min of motor imagery training and a control group, which practised a control visuomotor task over the same period of time.

Conditional associative learning is impaired in cerebellar disease in humans.

Eight patients with lesions restricted to the cerebellum were compared with a total of 25 age-matched controls on a reaction time (RT) task allowing the recording of simple and choice RTs as well as RTs to abstract visual patterns signifying the particular movement to be performed. In all conditions the actual movements required (either a left or a right button press) remained the same, but the cognitive requirements of the task varied. In the abstract patterns condition, the significance of the various patterns with regard to the required movement had to be learned by the subjects.

Muscle tone in Huntington's disease.

Tone was evaluated quantitatively in 39 patients with Huntington's disease (HD) by measuring resistance to passive elbow flexion and extension movements on a hydraulic testing device. A velocity dependent increase in resistance to passive elbow flexion and to a lesser extent in resistance to passive extension was found in 10 patients. Increase in muscle tone was related to disease duration but not to the age of the patients nor to the severity of choreatic movements or the amount of cognitive impairment.

Pre- and postcentral somatosensory evoked potentials in Huntington's disease: effects of stimulus repetition rate.

We recorded frontal, central and parietal somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) to median nerve stimulation in 20 patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and in a group of normal controls. Two stimulus repetition rates, 1 Hz and 5 Hz, were employed. In HD patients the early cortical potentials (latency range 20-30 ms) at all 3 recording locations were replaced by a widespread, broadly configured N20-25 deflection, while later potentials at 40-80 ms did not significantly differ from those of normals.

Ontogeny is different for explicit and implicit memory in humans.

This study was aimed to clarify in how far ontogenetic development is different for declarative/explicit compared to procedural/implicit learning. These two memory subsystems are differentially affected in a number of pathological conditions. Sixty-one children between the age of 5 and 10 years were tested on a verbal story recall and non-verbal pictorial recall task, representing explicit memory.

Intact conduction of fastest corticospinal efferents is not sufficient for normal voluntary muscle strength: transcranial motor cortex stimulation in patients with tetraplegia.

In six patients with chronic severe tetraparesis, caused by closed head injury (3 cases), basilar thrombosis (2 cases) or global hypoxia (1 case), responses of suprathreshold transcranial magnetic stimulation of motor cortex to thenar and abductor hallucis muscles on both sides were studied. Results showed in most patients normal thresholds and latencies (17 out of 24 latencies within normal +/- 2 S.D.

Transcranial stimulation of motor cortex in upper motor neurone syndrome: its relation to the motor deficit.

The purpose of this investigation was to clarify the functional significance of the fastest cortico-motoneuronal connections in chronic upper motor neurone syndromes. Using magneto-electrical stimulation of motor cortex the intactness of cortico-motoneuronal connections was assessed in 51 patients presenting with variable degrees of impairment. There was a gross correlation between clinical impairment of the patient and the degree of pathology of cortico-motoneuronal efferents.

Influence of stimulus repetition rate on cortical somatosensory potentials evoked by median nerve stimulation: implications for generation mechanisms.

Despite growing clinical and experimental interest in the cortical components of somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) little is known about their physiological dynamics, e.g. with changing stimulation parameters.

Modification of cortical somatosensory evoked potentials during tactile exploration and simple active and passive movements.

The present study compares the effects of different types of movement on median nerve somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) recorded from frontal, central and parietal electrodes. Test conditions included tactile exploratory movements, repetitive active and passive thumb movements and isometric contraction. All these conditions modified the SEPs in a similar manner.

Central motor conduction to hand and leg muscles in Huntington's disease.

Using electromagnetic stimulation of motor cortex and cervical or lumbar roots, central conduction times to the thenar and abductor hallucis muscles bilaterally were determined in a population of 32 patients with definite Huntington's disease (HD) and 14 subjects at risk. The HD patients showed a wide variety of different severity of choreatic movements, disease duration, and total disability. None of the stimulation parameters (latency after cortical stimulation, amplitude, threshold, or central conduction time) revealed statistically significant abnormalities compared with a normal control group as well as between patient subgroups.