Search results for "NCEP"
showing 10 items of 3866 documents
Standard Therapeutic Approach and New Therapies
2015
The traditional approach to therapy of Crohn’s disease has been the step-up approach usually represented as a pyramid (Fig. 7.1) where, progressing from mild to severe disease, therapeutic choices proceed step by step from less potent drugs at the basement of the pyramid to more potent but also more toxic drugs at the top. The advent of biological therapies and the wider use of immunomodulators, together with the opportunity to achieve ambitious treatment goals and possibly to modify the course of disease, have led to other approaches such as the accelerated step-up or the top-down approach. This means that immunomodulators and biologics can be used earlier and de-escalated when disease is …
Visual mismatch negativity for changes in orientation - a sensory memory-dependent response
2008
It remains unclear whether the mismatch negativity of event-related potentials (ERPs) in vision resembles its auditory counterpart in terms of memory relatedness. We recorded ERPs to visual bars in adult humans engaged in an auditory task. In one condition, a bar ('standard') repeated at 400- or 1100-ms non-stimulated intervals was rarely (P = 0.1) replaced by another bar of a different orientation ('deviant'). In the other condition (400-ms intervals), the occurrences of the standards were replaced by 10 (P = 0.1 each) bars of different orientations, including that of the deviant ('control-deviant'). Deviants shifted ERPs towards negative polarity relative to standards in occipital electro…
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…
Quality of life as a therapeutic objective in the management of hepatic encephalopathy and the potential role of rifaximin-α
2021
Objective Quality of life (QoL) is impaired in patients with hepatic encephalopathy and rifaximin-α can improve QoL within 6 months. This study assessed the importance of QoL as a therapeutic objective in hepatic encephalopathy management; whether QoL is routinely assessed in hepatic encephalopathy patients in clinical practice and the role of rifaximin-α in this context. Methods A survey was conducted of healthcare professionals (HCPs) from Europe and Australia involved in hepatic encephalopathy management. HCPs rated the importance of a range of therapeutic objectives on a 1–7 Likert scale (1 = not at all important; 7 = extremely important). HCPs were also required to provide three patien…
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…
A Look into Liver Mitochondrial Dysfunction as a Hallmark in Progression of Brain Energy Crisis and Development of Neurologic Symptoms in Hepatic Enc…
2020
Background: The relationship between liver disease and neuropathology in hepatic encephalopathy is well known, but the genesis of encephalopathy in liver failure is yet to be elucidated. Conceptually, the main cause of hepatic encephalopathy is the accumulation of brain ammonia due to impaired liver detoxification function or occurrence of portosystemic shunt. Yet, as well as taking up toxic ammonia, the liver also produces vital metabolites that ensure normal cerebral function. Given this, for insight into how perturbations in the metabolic capacity of the liver may be related to brain pathology, it is crucial to understand the extent of ammonia-related changes in the hepatic metabolism th…
Quantifying Intermodal Distraction by Emotion During Math Performance: An Electrophysiological Approach
2019
Emotionally engaging stimuli are powerful competitors for limited attention capacity. In the cognitive neuroscience laboratory, the presence of task-irrelevant emotionally arousing visual distractors prompts decreased performance and attenuated brain responses measured in concurrent visual tasks. The extent to which distraction effects occur across different sensory modalities is not yet established, however. Here, we examined the extent and time course of competition between a naturalistic distractor sound and a visual task stimulus, using dense-array electroencephalography (EEG) recordings from 20 college students. Steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) were quantified from EEG, e…
Patients with Minimal Hepatic Encephalopathy Show Altered Thermal Sensitivity and Autonomic Function
2021
Cirrhotic patients may experience alterations in the peripheral nervous system and in somatosensory perception. Impairment of the somatosensory system could contribute to cognitive and motor alterations characteristic of minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE), which affects up to 40% of cirrhotic patients. We assessed the relationship between MHE and alterations in thermal, vibration, and/or heat pain sensitivity in 58 cirrhotic patients (38 without and 20 with MHE according to Psychometric Hepatic Encephalopathy Score) and 39 controls. All participants underwent attention and coordination tests, a nerve conduction study, autonomic function testing, and evaluation of sensory thresholds (vibra…
Pre-pregnancy and early pregnancy dietary behavior in relation to maternal and newborn health in the Norwegian Fit for Delivery study – a post hoc ob…
2018
Background Randomized controlled trials targeting maternal dietary and physical activity behaviors during pregnancy have generally failed to accomplish reductions in the prevalence of adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes. Interventions carried out during pregnancy could thus be missing the mark in maximizing intervention health benefit. Objective To investigate whether pre-pregnancy and early pregnancy dietary behavior as reported at inclusion into the Norwegian Fit for Delivery (NFFD) trial was associated with maternal and neonatal outcomes irrespective of subsequent randomization assignment. Design The study is a post-hoc observational analysis of data from a randomized controlled lifes…
Recognition of rapid-eye-movement sleep from single-channel EEG data by artificial neural networks: a study in depressive patients with and without a…
1996
An automatic procedure for the online recognition of REM sleep appears to be a necessary tool for selective REM sleep deprivation in depressive patients. To develop such a procedure we applied an artificial neural network to preprocessed single-channel EEG activity. EOG and EMG information was purposely not provided as input to the network. A generalized back-propagation algorithm was used for computer simulation. The sleep profile scored manually according to Rechtschaffen and Kales served as the desired output during the training period and as standard for the judgement of the network output during working mode. Polysomnographic recordings from 5 healthy subjects were pooled to train the …