Combined effects of neuroticism and negative emotional context on spontaneous EEG dynamics.

Neuroticism is a personality trait with great clinical relevance, defined as a tendency to experience negative affect, sustained self-generated negative thoughts and impaired emotion regulation. Here, we investigated spontaneous brain dynamics in the aftermath of negative emotional events and their links with neuroticism in order to shed light on the prolonged activity of large-scale brain networks associated with the control of affect. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) from 36 participants who were asked to rest after watching neutral or fearful video clips.

An automatized method to determine latencies of motor-evoked potentials under physiological and pathophysiological conditions.

Latencies of motor evoked potentials (MEPs) can provide insights into the motor neuronal pathways activated by transcranial magnetic stimulation. Notwithstanding its clinical relevance, accurate, unbiased methods to automatize latency detection are still missing.We present a novel open-source algorithm suitable for MEP onset/latency detection during resting state that only requires the post-stimulus electromyography signal and exploits the approximation of the first derivative of this signal to find the time point of initial deflection of the MEP.

A Novel Nonsense Mutation in (c.1421G>A; p.Trp474Ter) in the Beta Chain of Fibrinogen Causing Hypofibrinogenemia with Bleeding Phenotype.

Congenital hypofibrinogenemia is a rare bleeding disorder characterized by a proportional decrease of functional and antigenic fibrinogen levels. Hypofibrinogenemia can be considered the phenotypic expression of heterozygous loss of function mutations occurring within one of the three fibrinogen genes (, , and ). Clinical manifestations are highly variable; most patients are usually asymptomatic, but may appear with mild to severe bleeding or thrombotic complications.

Afibrinogenemia caused by a novel homozygous missense mutation, FGB p.Cys241Tyr, in a male patient with recurrent intracranial bleeding: case report and review of literature.

Introduction: Congenital afibrinogenemia is a severe bleeding disorder, sometimes manifesting as thrombosis and/or pregnancy complications. Intracranial haemorrhage (ICH) constitutes the major cause of death in this disease.

Methods: We present the case of a male patient with congenital afibrinogenemia, who presented with recurrent intracranial hemorrhages, despite prophylactic fibrinogen substitution.

Functional connectivity fingerprints of the human pulvinar: Decoding its role in cognition.

The pulvinar is the largest thalamic nucleus in the brain and considered as a key structure in sensory processing and attention. Although its anatomy is well known, in particular thanks to studies in non-human primates, its role in perception and cognition remains poorly understood. Here, we used resting-state functional connectivity from a large sample of high-resolution data provided by the Human Connectome Project, combined with a large-scale meta-analysis approach to segregate and characterize the functional organization of the pulvinar nucleus.

Pulvino-cortical interaction: An integrative role in the control of attention.

Selective attention is a fundamental cognitive function that guides behavior by selecting and prioritizing salient or relevant sensory information of our environment. Despite early evidence and theoretical proposal pointing to an implication of thalamic control in attention, most studies in the past two decades focused on cortical substrates, largely ignoring the contribution of subcortical regions as well as cortico-subcortical interactions. Here, we suggest a key role of the pulvinar in the selection of salient and relevant information via its involvement in priority maps.

Neural functional correlates of the impact of socio-emotional stimuli on performances on a flanker task in children aged 9-11 years.

Immature cognition is susceptible to interference from competing information, and particularly in affectively charged situations. Several studies have reported activation in the anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex and amygdala associated with emotional conflict processing in adults but literature is lacking regarding children. Moreover, studies in children and adolescents still disagree regarding the functional activation of amygdala related to facial stimuli.

Protein modelling to understand FGB mutations leading to congenital hypofibrinogenaemia.

Introduction: Congenital hypofibrinogenaemia is a quantitative fibrinogen disorder characterized by proportionally decreased levels of functional and antigenic fibrinogen. Mutations accounting for quantitative fibrinogen disorders are relatively frequent in the conserved COOH-terminal globular domains of the γ and Bβ chains. The latter mutations are of particular interest since the Bβ-chain is considered the rate-limiting chain in the hepatic production of the fibrinogen hexamer.

Hypofibrinogenemia and liver disease: a new case of Aguadilla fibrinogen and review of the literature.

Introduction: Fibrinogen storage disease (FSD) is characterized by hypofibrinogenemia and hepatic inclusions due to impaired release of mutant fibrinogen which accumulates and aggregates in the hepatocellular endoplasmic reticulum. Liver disease is variable.

Aim: We studied a new Swiss family with fibrinogen Aguadilla.

Natural history of patients with congenital dysfibrinogenemia.

We conducted a multicenter study of 101 patients with congenital dysfibrinogenemia (CD) to characterize the incidence of hemorrhagic and thrombotic events as well as complications of pregnancy and surgery. At the time of diagnosis, 10.9% and 13.

Lasting impact of regret and gratification on resting brain activity and its relation to depressive traits.

Obtaining lower gains than rejected alternatives during decision making evokes feelings of regret, whereas higher gains elicit gratification. Although decision-related emotions produce lingering effects on mental state, neuroscience research has generally focused on transient brain responses to positive or negative events, but ignored more sustained consequences of emotional episodes on subsequent brain states. We investigated how spontaneous brain activity and functional connectivity at rest are modulated by postdecision regret and gratification in 18 healthy human subjects using a gambling task in fMRI.

FGB mutations leading to congenital quantitative fibrinogen deficiencies: an update and report of four novel mutations.

Introduction: Causative mutations leading to congenital quantitative fibrinogen are frequently clustered in FGA encoding the fibrinogen Aα-chain. Mutations of FGB encoding the Bβ-chain are less common and of interest since the Bβ-chain is considered the rate-limiting factor in the hepatic production of the fibrinogen hexamer.

Method: Four novel FGB mutations were identified in two afibrinogenemic (one new-born and one 30 years old male) and hypofibrinogenemic (a 49 years old female) patient, with heterogeneous thrombotic and bleeding phenotype.

An LCD tachistoscope with submillisecond precision.

Tachistoscopes allow brief visual stimulation delivery, which is crucial for experiments in which subliminal presentation is required. Up to now, tachistoscopes have had shortcomings with respect to timing accuracy, reliability, and flexibility of use. Here, we present a new and inexpensive two-channel tachistoscope that allows for exposure durations in the submillisecond range with an extremely high timing accuracy.

Parametric modulation of error-related ERP components by the magnitude of visuo-motor mismatch.

Errors generate typical brain responses, characterized by two successive event-related potentials (ERP) following incorrect action: the error-related negativity (ERN) and the positivity error (Pe). However, it is unclear whether these error-related responses are sensitive to the magnitude of the error, or instead show all-or-none effects. We studied error-monitoring with ERPs while healthy adult participants performed ballistic pointing movements towards a visual target with or without optical prisms, in alternating runs.