Search results for "CORT"
showing 10 items of 3558 documents
Cortisol suppression and hearing thresholds in tinnitus after low-dose dexamethasone challenge
2012
Abstract Background Tinnitus is a frequent, debilitating hearing disorder associated with severe emotional and psychological suffering. Although a link between stress and tinnitus has been widely recognized, the empirical evidence is scant. Our aims were to test for dysregulation of the stress-related hypothalamus-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis in tinnitus and to examine ear sensitivity variations with cortisol manipulation. Methods Twenty-one tinnitus participants and 21 controls comparable in age, education, and overall health status but without tinnitus underwent basal cortisol assessments on three non-consecutive days and took 0.5 mg of dexamethasone (DEX) at 23:00 on the first day. Corti…
No Effects of Acute Psychosocial Stress on Working Memory in Older People With Type 2 Diabetes
2021
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) has been considered a public health threat due to its growing prevalence, particularly in the older population. It is important to know the effects of psychosocial stress and its potential consequences for some basic cognitive processes that are important in daily life. Currently, there is very little information about how people with T2D face acute psychosocial stressors, and even less about how their response affects working memory (WM), which is essential for their functionality and independence. Our aim was to characterize the response to an acute laboratory psychosocial stressor and its effects on WM in older people with T2D. Fifty participants with T2D from 52 to…
Evolving European guidance on the medical management of neovascular age related macular degeneration
2006
BACKGROUND: Until recently, only two options were available for the treatment of choroidal neovascularisation (CNV) associated with age related macular degeneration (AMD)-thermal laser photocoagulation and photodynamic therapy with verteporfin (PDT-V). However, new treatments for CNV are in development, and data from phase III clinical trials of some of these pharmacological interventions are now available. In light of these new data, expert guidance is required to enable retina specialists with expertise in the management of AMD to select and use the most appropriate therapies for the treatment of neovascular AMD. METHODS: Consensus from a round table of European retina specialists was obt…
Neuroplasticity in the Adjustment to Blindness
1999
Loss of vision due to injury to the eyes results in deafferentation of very large areas of the human cortex and poses striking demands on other sensory systems to adjust to blindness in a society that heavily relies on vision. Blind subjects need to extract crucial spatial information from touch and hearing. To accomplish this, plastic trans-modal changes appear to take place by which a larger area of the sensorimotor cortex is devoted to the representation of the reading finger in Braille readers, and parts of the former visual cortex are recruited for the processing of tactile and auditory information.
Objective assessment of cataract: Comparison between the Lens Opacities Classification System III and a Scheimpflug camera
2015
Purpose Develop an automatic system for cataract classification using the Sirius Scheimpflug for both nuclear and cortical cataract. Methods Scheimpflug images were taken using the Sirius system in 50 patients with nuclear and/or cortical cataract (mean age 69 ± 9.2 years). The nuclear opacity (NO) and cortical opacity was graded by an ophthalmologist according to the Lens Opacities Classification System (LOCSIII) by comparing the slit-lamp image with the LOCS's standard nuclear images. A custom-made MATLAB program was used to calculate the pixel intensity value within a region of interest (ROI) of the nucleus and to calculate the percentage of opaque pixels in the cortex. Results Eighty-ni…
Long-term physical activity modifies automatic visual processing
2017
Electrophysiologically registered visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is known to represent automatic visual processing in human visual cortex. Since physical activity (PA) is generally beneficial to cerebrovascular function, we wanted to find out if automatic visual processing is affected by PA. We investigated the connection between long-term leisure-time PA and precognitive visual processing in 32 healthy young males. Participants were divided into active (n = 16) and inactive (n = 16) group according to their leisure-time PA records from the past three years. vMMN was recorded with electroencephalogram using passive oddball paradigm with visual bars. Standard (90%) and deviant (10%) stimu…
Early cortical processing of vection-inducing visual stimulation as measured by event-related brain potentials (ERP)
2019
Abstract Visual motion stimuli can induce the perception of self-motion in stationary observers (known as vection). In the present study, we investigated the sensory processing underlying vection by measuring the human event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by the movement onset of a visual stimulus. We presented participants a visual stimulus consisting of alternating black-and-white vertical bars that moved in horizontal direction, creating the sensation of vection. The stimulus was presented on a screen that was divided into a central and a surrounding peripheral visual area. Both areas moved independently from each other, resulting in four different movement patterns: the periph…
Illusory contours and specific regions of human extrastriate cortex: evidence from rTMS
2003
Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies showed that perception of illusory contours is associated with extrastriate cortex activation prevailing on the right side. 1 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is able to induce lasting inhibition of cortical activity. The objective of the study was to investigate the role of extrastriate cortex in illusory contour perception inducing 1 Hz rTMS interference in healthy subjects. Eight healthy subjects underwent 1 Hz rTMS (600 pulses) through a figure-of-eight coil over right and left occipital cortex (O1 and O2 of 10/20 EEG system); sham magnetic stimulation on the same sites and right motor cortex rTMS (in three subjects) we…
Mapping of the human visual cortex using image-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation
2002
We describe a protocol using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to systematically map the visual sensations induced by focal and non-invasive stimulation of the human occipital cortex. TMS is applied with a figure of eight coil to 28 positions arranged in a 2x2-cm grid over the occipital area. A digitizing tablet connected to a PC computer running customized software, and audio and video recording are used for detailed and accurate data collection and analysis of evoked phosphenes. A frameless image-guided neuronavigational device is used to describe the position of the actual sites of the stimulation coils relative to the cortical surface. Our results show that TMS is able to elicit p…
Cortical Patterns of Pleasurable Musical Chills Revealed by High-Density EEG
2020
Music has the capacity to elicit strong positive feelings in humans by activating the brain’s reward system. Because group emotional dynamics is a central concern of social neurosciences, the study of emotion in natural/ecological conditions is gaining interest. This study aimed to show that high-density EEG (HD-EEG) is able to reveal patterns of cerebral activities previously identified by fMRI or PET scans when the subject experiences pleasurable musical chills. We used HD-EEG to record participants (11 female, 7 male) while listening to their favorite pleasurable chill-inducing musical excerpts; they reported their subjective emotional state from low pleasure up to chills. HD-EEG results…