0000000000341995
AUTHOR
Hans-jochen Heinze
Alterations of Continuous MEG Measures during Mental Activities
In a pilot study, we investigated the topography of 11 continuous MEG measures for the eyes-opened and eyes-closed condition together with three simple mental tasks (mental arithmetic, visual imagery, word generation). One-minute recordings for each condition from 16 right-handed subjects were analyzed. The electrophysiological measures consisted of 6 spectral band measures together with spectral edge frequency and spectral entropy, plus the time-domain-based entropy of amplitudes (ENA) and the nonlinear measures correlation dimension D2 and Lyapunov exponent L1. In summary, our results indicate a pronounced task-dependent difference between the anterior and the posterior region, but no lat…
Chronic alcohol intake abolishes the relationship between dopamine synthesis capacity and learning signals in ventral striatum
Drugs of abuse elicit dopamine release in the ventral striatum, possibly biasing dopamine-driven reinforcement learning towards drug-related reward at the expense of non-drug-related reward. Indeed, in alcohol-dependent patients, reactivity in dopaminergic target areas is shifted from non-drug-related stimuli towards drug-related stimuli. Such 'hijacked' dopamine signals may impair flexible learning from non-drug-related rewards, and thus promote craving for the drug of abuse. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure ventral striatal activation by reward prediction errors (RPEs) during a probabilistic reversal learning task in recently detoxified alcohol-dependent pati…
Biomarkers of Neurodegeneration in Autoimmune-Mediated Encephalitis
Progranulin (PGRN), Total-Tau (t-tau), and Neurofilament light chain (NfL) are well known biomarkers of neurodegeneration. The objective of the present study was to investigate whether these parameters represent also biomarkers in autoimmune-mediated Encephalitis (AE) and may give us insights into the pathomechanisms of AE. We retrospectively examined the concentration of PGRN in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum of 38 patients suffering from AE in acute phase and/or under treatment. This AE cohort comprises patients with autoantibodies against: NMDAR (n = 18 patients), Caspr2 (n = 8), Lgi-1 (n = 10), GABAB(R) (n = 1), and AMPAR (n = 1). Additionally, the concentrations of NfL (n = 25…
A new approach using high volume blood patch for prevention of post-dural puncture headache following intrathecal catheter pump exchange.
Background: In an observational study, complications of intrathecal catheter pumps necessitating surgical exchange were analyzed. Also the use of a high-volume prophylactic epidural blood patch (EBP) during surgery for preventing post-dural puncture headache (PDPH) with a follow-up for 1 year is described. Materials and Methods: In 22 patients with refractory chronic pain of cancer/noncancer origin or severe spasticity, who were receiving intrathecal morphine including adjuvants or baclofen for symptom relief, catheter exchange with or without pump was performed. In patients with documented symptoms of PDPH following initial intrathecal catheter implantation, a prophylactic EBP with a high …