Behavioural Neurology

BACKGROUND: Postpandemic stress disorder (PPSD) is an unofficial term that refers to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental disorder resulting from increased stress, anxiety, and trauma associated with unpleasant life experiences. Many scientific studies indicate that symptoms of increased stress, job burnout, anxiety, and depressive disorders are associated with medical personnel performing their professional duties around COVID-19 patients. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of symptoms that may indicate the presence of PPSD symptoms-depression, anxiety, and stress-in medical personnel...

Objective: This study is aimed at investigating the association between the twenty-four-hour ambulatory blood pressure variability monitoring (ABPM) and cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) burden in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients. Methods: 115 AIS patients with demographics, vascular risk factors, 24 h ABPM, and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were retrospectively enrolled. 3.0 T MRI was used to assess cSVD burden by combining four MRI markers including white matter hyperintensities (WMHs), cerebral microbleeds (CMBs), perivascular spaces (PVS), and lacunes...

Aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency is a rare congenital autosomal recessive metabolic disorder caused by pathogenic homozygous or compound heterozygous variants in the dopa decarboxylase (DDC) gene. Adeno-associated viral vector-mediated gene transfer of the human AADC gene into the putamina has become available. This systematic review on PubMed, Scopus databases, and other sources is aimed at describing the AADC whole phenotypic spectrum in order to facilitate its early diagnosis. Literature reviews, original articles, retrospective and comparative studies, large case series, case reports, and short communications were considered...

The purpose of the study is to investigate how much of variance in Parkinson's Disease (PD) individuals' speech intelligibility could be predicted by seven speech fluency indicators (i.e., repetition , omission , distortion , correction , unfilled pauses , filled pauses, and speaking rate ). Speech data were retrieved from a database containing a reading task produced by a group of 16 English-speaking individuals with PD (Jaeger, Trivedi & Stadtchnitzer, 2019). The results from a multiple regression indicated that an addition of 54% of variance in the speech intelligibility scores among individuals with PD could be accounted for after the speakers' PD severity level measured based on Hoehn and Yahr's (1967) disease stage was included as a covariate...

The purpose of this study was to discuss the effect of voluntary wheel running on striatal dopamine levels and anxiety-like behavior in rats with global cerebral ischemia. The male Sprague-Dawley rats were signed on in this study and randomly divided into following 4 groups: Control group (C group), Sham group (S group), ischemia group (I group), and 3 weeks physical exercise before ischemia group (3RI group). The rats in the 3RI group were placed in a voluntary running wheel for three weeks to exercise. Then, the rats in I and 3RI groups received bilateral carotid artery ligation (2-VO) operation...

Acceptance of illness is regarded as an indicator of functioning and predictor of quality of life. However, quality of life of patients with epilepsy in sub-Saharan countries worsen because of low medication adherence, increased morbidity and mortality, and the stigmatization associated with the disease. This research is aimed at assessing the level of acceptance of illness of patients with epilepsy and associated quality of life in North-East Ethiopia. Methods . A cross-sectional study was conducted from January to June 2021 at the Debre Berhan Referral Hospital, North-East Ethiopia...

INTRODUCTION: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinically variable syndrome manifesting as slow progressive loss of speech and language with multiple underlying neurodegenerative pathologies. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We included data from nine PPA patients with available autopsies. We then retrospectively reviewed all available medical records, neuropsychology, and MRI results to confirm the corresponding subtypes of PPA and compared them with postmortem neuropathological results...

Background: Chronic tension-type headache is the primary headache with the highest prevalence. The present study is aimed at analyzing the associations between patient self-efficacy and headache impact with pain characteristics, kinesiophobia, anxiety sensitivity, and physical activity levels in subjects with chronic tension-type headache. Materials and Methods: An observational descriptive study was carried out. A total sample of 42 participants was recruited at university environment with diagnosis of tension-type headache...

Despite the relevance of cognitive deficits in fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) and the attempts to elucidate the influence of the disorder symptoms in the cognitive decline reported by patients, no studies have explored the specific role of social support on cognition in FMS. Social support has been shown to be an essential modulator factor on cognitive performance in other diseases. Sixty-four women with FMS and 32 healthy women participated in the study and completed questionnaires pertaining to anxiety, depression, fatigue, insomnia, clinical pain, and social support, along with a neuropsychological battery assessing verbal memory, organization, strategic and planning abilities, self-regulation, processing speed, attention, and cognitive flexibility...

INTRODUCTION: Radiotherapy for patients with head and neck cancers raises their risk of aspiration pneumonia-related death. We aimed to develop and validate a model to predict radiation-associated aspiration pneumonia (RAP) among patients with dysphagia after radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 453 dysphagic patients with NPC were retrospectively recruited from Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital from January 2012 to January 2018...

Objective: To characterize the cerebral imaging and electroclinical features and investigate their etiological contributions to seizures in pseudoparathyroidism (PHP). Methods: The clinical symptoms, biochemical imaging by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) tests, and electroencephalogram (EEG) manifestations of five PHP patients with seizures were retrospectively collected and analyzed. Results: Physical examination showed an average stature in cases 2~4 and short stature in cases 1 and 5...

Background: Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a chronic musculoskeletal pain condition characterized by widespread pain, sleep problems (i.e., insomnia and unrefreshing sleep), fatigue, cognitive, and emotional difficulties. Although pain has been proposed the factor mostly impacting in the FMS patients' function, emotional and psychological FMS-associated factors are also known to exert a negative impact in quality of life and functional capacity. Nonetheless, the relationship between these factors and functional limitations in FMS patients is considered to be complex and not clearly defined...

Extraction and analysis of the EEG (electroencephalograph) information features generated during behavioral decision-making can provide a better understanding of the state of mind. Previous studies have focused more on the brainwave features after behavioral decision-making. In fact, the EEG before decision-making is more worthy of our attention. In this study, we introduce a new index based on the reaction time of subjects before decision-making, called the Prestimulus Time (PT), which have important reference value for the study of cognitive function, neurological diseases, and other fields...

Methods: B35 neuronal cells and C6 glial cells were incubated with MK-801 for 7 days followed by MK-801, MK801 in combination with water extracts of P. cocos (PRP for P. cocos cum Radix Pini or WP for White Poria) treatment for an additional 7 days. Analysis of cell mobility, F-actin aggregation, and Rho signaling modulation was performed to clarify the roles of PRP or WP in MK-801-treated B35 and C6 cells. Results: MK-801 decreases B35 cell mobility, whereas the inhibited cell migration ability and F-actin aggregation in MK-801-treated B35 or C6 cells could be reversed by PRP or WP...

In addition to chronic widespread pain and depression and anxiety symptoms, patients with fibromyalgia frequently experience cognitive problems. This study investigated executive functions in fibromyalgia via a Go/No-Go task. To obtain comprehensive information about performance, traditional and ex-Gaussian parameters of reaction time (RT) variability were used, in addition to speed and accuracy indices. Ex-Gaussian parameters show an excellent fit to empirical RT distributions. Fifty-two female fibromyalgia patients and twenty-eight healthy controls participated...

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) has been widely employed to examine brain functional connectivity (FC) alterations in various neurological disorders. At present, various computational methods have been proposed to estimate connectivity strength between different brain regions, as the edge weight of FC networks. However, little is known about which model is more sensitive to Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression. This study comparatively characterized topological properties of rs-FC networks constructed with Pearson correlation (PC), dynamic time warping (DTW), and group information guided independent component analysis (GIG-ICA), aimed at investigating the sensitivity and effectivity of these methods in differentiating AD stages...

Background: Research suggests a significant association between increasing age and memory impairments. Nevertheless, for some individuals, memory performance stays within or above the normative values of younger subjects. This is known as successful memory aging and is associated with specific neurophysiological features and psychological and lifestyle-related variables. To date, little is known about the association between successful memory aging and intrinsic capacity (IC) defined as "the composite of all the physical and mental (including psychosocial) capacities that an individual can draw on at any point in time" and resilience...

Objectives: Cognitive decline could be seen as the sign of preclinical phase of dementia, which was found to be sex differentiated. Previous studies had discovered that there might be some link between abnormal sleep duration and cognitive performance. Additionally, hypertension was found to be one of the important risk factors for cognitive decline and abnormal sleep duration was also a significant risk factor for hypertension. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate sex differences in the association of sleep duration with cognitive performance and to further explore potential effect modifiers that may exist...

The glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) is a hormone which is produced in the enteroendocrine L-cells in the ileum and the neurons of nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) in the brain which has numerous metabolic effects. The central GLP-1R's role in cognitive functioning is well known. On the contrary, it has been shown that exercise has positive effects on brain function. So, we decided to elucidate whether the central GLP-1 has a role in memory and learning. Thirty-two rats were used in this experiment in 4 groups...

Background: Decreased cognitive function is a common problem in the old adults, which has high risk of progression to Alzheimer's diseases (AD) and other dementias. This study was aimed at finding out the association between physical activity and cognitive function. Methods: In total, 1514 participants with the age ≥ 55 years old registered in the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) database were selected in this study. The association between physical activity and cognitive function was analyzed via the generalized additive model...