Search results for "NEUROSCIENCE"
showing 10 items of 8040 documents
Determinants of Sleepiness at Wheel and Missing Accidents in Patients With Obstructive Sleep Apnea
2021
Study ObjectivesMotor-vehicle crashes are frequent in untreated OSA patients but there is still uncertainty on prevalence as well as physiological or clinical determinants of sleepiness at the wheel (SW) in OSA patients. We assessed determinants of SW or sleepiness related near-miss car accident (NMA) in a group of non-professional drivers with OSA.MethodsA 237 consecutive, treatment-naïve PSG-diagnosed OSA patients (161 males, 53.1 ± 12.6 years) were enrolled. Self-reported SW was assessed by positive answer to the question, “Have you had episodes of falling asleep while driving or episodes of drowsiness at wheel that could interfere with your driving skill in the last year?” Occurrence of…
Oestrogen receptor subtype-specific repression of calpain expression and calpain enzymatic activity in neuronal cells - implications for neuroprotect…
2006
Calpains represent a superfamily of Ca2+-activated cysteine-proteases, which are important mediators of apoptosis and necrosis. In the brain, m-calpain and micro-calpain, the two ubiquitous calpain-isoforms, are strongly activated in neurones after an excitotoxic Ca2+ influx occurring, for example, during cerebral ischemia. Because oestrogen and its receptors (ERalpha/ERbeta) can exert neuroprotective activity, we investigated their influence on expression of calpains and their endogenous inhibitor, calpastatin. We found that ectopic expression of ERalpha in human neuroblastoma SK-N-MC cells led to a ligand-independent constitutive down-regulation of m-calpain accompanied by an up-regulatio…
Ambulatory assessment as a means of longitudinal phenotypes characterization in psychiatric disorders
2014
Abstract Ambulatory Assessment (AA) comprises the use of in-field methods to assess individuals’ behavior, physiology, and the experience as they unfold in naturalistic settings. We propose that AA is favorable for the investigation of gene–environment interactions and for the search for endophenotypes, being able to assess the experienced environment and to track basic regulatory processes, such as stress reactivity, affective instability, and reward experience, which are potential common factors that underlie psychiatric disorders. In this article, we (a) first describe briefly the rationale of AA and summarize the key advantages of the approach, (b) highlight within-subject regulatory pr…
Validating an Efficient Method to Quantify Motion Sickness
2011
Objective: Motion sickness (MS) can be a debilitating side effect associated with motion in real or virtual environments. We analyzed the effect of expectancy on MS and propose and validate a fast and simple MS measure.Background: Several questionnaires measure MS before or after stimulus presentation, but no satisfactory tool has been established to quickly capture MS data during exposure. To fill this gap, we introduce the Fast MS Scale (FMS), a verbal rating scale ranging from zero (no sickness at all) to 20 (frank sickness). Also, little is known about the role of expectancy effects in MS studies. We conducted an experiment that addressed this issue.Method: For this study, 126 volunteer…
Functional brain imaging: a window into the visuo-vestibular systems
2007
Advances have been made in identifying how areas involved in processing vestibular, ocular motor, and visual information are represented in the human cortex as well as the cortical interaction between these systems in healthy subjects.While we know how some vestibular and ocular motor disorders modify visuo-vestibular interaction by changing the 'normal' cortical activation-deactivation patterns, it is still early days in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of patients with specific disorders. Findings from current brain imaging studies of several vestibular, ocular motor, and cerebellar disorders are presented.The promise of more insights into the complex neuronal networks of the…
Improvement of asymmetric thyroid eye disease with teprotumumab
2021
PurposeTeprotumumab, a specific blocking antibody to the insulin like growth factor 1 receptor, significantly reduced proptosis in patients with thyroid eye disease (TED) in recent clinical trials. Given its specificity, we expect it to demonstrate greater efficacy on the worse affected orbit, in patients with asymmetric TED. Herein, we investigate the differential impact of teprotumumab on the orbits of such patients.MethodsIn this pooled analysis of patients who were enrolled in the recent phase 2 (NCT01868997) and phase 3 (NCT03298867) trials, all patients with asymmetric TED (difference in exophthalmometry of ≥3 mm) were screened for eligibility. The primary outcomes of the trials, prop…
Event-related potentials to task-irrelevant changes in facial expressions
2009
Abstract Background Numerous previous experiments have used oddball paradigm to study change detection. This paradigm is applied here to study change detection of facial expressions in a context which demands abstraction of the emotional expression-related facial features among other changing facial features. Methods Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in adult humans engaged in a demanding auditory task. In an oddball paradigm, repeated pictures of faces with a neutral expression ('standard', p = .9) were rarely replaced by pictures with a fearful ('fearful deviant', p = .05) or happy ('happy deviant', p = .05) expression. Importantly, facial identities changed from picture to pi…
How important are satiation and satiety for weight regulation?
2013
Abstract: This chapter discusses how body weight is regulated in adult humans by a cybernetic-like process, whose main physiological response is the control of food intake, while energy expenditure modulation probably only passively participates in the adjustment of energy balance. The historical emergence and scientific definition of the two concepts ‘satiety’ and ‘satiation’ are recapitulated and their respective roles in body weight regulation are discussed. The original methodology developed to differentiate and separately quantify the roles of satiety and satiation in the quantitative control of food intake of healthy human subjects is described. Finally, the respective importance of s…
Studying hypertension in ocular fundus images using Hausdorff dispersion ordering.
2010
Retinal arterial and vein diameters are altered in individuals at risk of cardiovascular events mainly due to high blood pressure. The measurement of retinal vessel diameters has been proved to reflect individuals' vascular health. Dispersion of such measures which are obtained by means of ocular fundus images is a major factor not usually considered in clinical research. In this paper, a method to evaluate if different levels of clinically relevant covariables induce greater dispersion in retinal arterial and vein diameters is proposed. A multivariate dispersion ordering, the Hausdorff dispersion order, is used to compare the level of dispersion in such diameters for different groups of pa…
Effect of footwear on intramuscular EMG activity of plantar flexor muscles in walking
2020
One of the purposes of footwear is to assist locomotion, but some footwear types seem to restrict natural foot motion, which may affect the contribution of ankle plantar flexor muscles to propulsion. This study examined the effects of different footwear conditions on the activity of ankle plantar flexors during walking. Ten healthy habitually shod individuals walked overground in shoes, barefoot and in flip-flops while fine-wire electromyography (EMG) activity was recorded from flexor hallucis longus (FHL), soleus (SOL), and medial and lateral gastrocnemius (MG and LG) muscles. EMG signals were peak-normalised and analysed in the stance phase using Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM). We f…