History of neuroscience

Valeriana jatamansi Jones (VJJ), renowned for its extensive history in traditional Chinese medicine and ethnomedicine within China, is prevalently utilized to alleviate ailments such as epigastric distension and pain, gastrointestinal disturbances including food accumulation, diarrhea, and dysentery, as well as insomnia and other diseases. Moreover, the Iridoid-rich fraction derived from Valeriana jatamansi Jones (IRFV) has demonstrated efficacy in facilitating the recuperation of motor functions after spinal cord injury (SCI)...

Pre-existing psychiatric disorders were linked to an increased susceptibility to COVID-19 during the initial outbreak of the pandemic, while evidence during Omicron prevalence is lacking. Leveraging data from two prospective cohorts in China, we identified incident Omicron infections between January 2023 and April 2023. Participants with a self-reported history or self-rated symptoms of depression or anxiety before the Omicron pandemic were considered the exposed group, whereas the others were considered unexposed...

Stanislas Dehaene is a cognitive neuroscientist elucidating the biological mechanisms that give rise to human perception and cognition. In a conversation with Neuron, he talks about his ongoing interest in consciousness research, the role of theory in neuroscience, and his current work on education and the science of learning.

In this talk with Neuron, Christof Koch, a physicist and neuroscientist, advocates for a pragmatic program to track the footprints of consciousness in the brain and for team science, explains the recent pseudo-controversy regarding integrated information theory of consciousness, and speaks about the joy of exploring the mysteries around us.

OBJECTIVES: The management of blood pressure (BP) and the role of antihypertensive medications (AHT) in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) remain uncertain. This study aimed to investigate the impact of pre- and intra-stroke AHT use on systolic (SBP), diastolic (DBP), and blood pressure variability (BPV). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A post-hoc analysis was conducted on 228 AIS patients from the PREVISE study. All patients underwent 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring within 48 h of symptom onset...

A rare case of aneurysm of the lateral sacral artery is reported. This 46-year-old female presented with complaints of bowel and bladder incontinence and decreased perianal sensation for the past 15 months. She underwent laminectomy and diskectomy for the diagnosis of a prolapsed disk at peripheral hospital where the surgeon was confronted with a severe and unexpected hemorrhage, and surgery was aborted without effective treatment. Prior medical history includes hypertensive kidney disease with a renal transplant eight years ago...

OBJECTIVES: Cerebral microbleeds (MBs) are recently described entity on magnetic resonance (MR) neuroimaging and are considered one of the markers of small vessel disease. We aimed to study the clinicoradiological features of cerebral MBs that were diagnosed in MR neuroimaging. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We studied 109 South Indian patients, who presented to a tertiary care institution for MR neuroimaging with cerebral MBs as diagnosed on MR neuroimaging based on either the gradient T2* imaging or susceptibility-weighted imaging...

Traumatic spondylolisthesis of the lumbosacral junction (SPL) is a spinal injury rarely seen in current practice. Few cases are reported in the literature. It arises from complex trauma of high-energy mechanisms. We discussed the case of a young patient. He is 24 years old without notable pathological history victim of a traffic road accident. Clinically, he has no sensory or motor deficit, it is a spinal trauma classified American spinal injury association E (ASIA E) with severe back pain. A whole-body CT scan performed on admission showed a grade 2 L5-S1 SPL...

INTRODUCTION: CACNA1A gene variants are correlated with different disorders, including episodic ataxia type 2, spinocerebellar ataxia type 6, and familial hemiplegic migraine type 1. Despite dystonia not being a typical manifestation of CACNA1A variants, there are reports indicating a link between this gene mutation and dystonic features. METHODS: We report the case of a patient with a novel missense variant of the CACNA1A gene presenting headache, head and arm tremor, dystonia, episodic painful focal dystonic attacks, and unexplained falls...

The discovery of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is frequently attributed to Dr. Gustav Oppenheim-a man who has been largely passed over in history. Oppenheim's clinical and neuropathologic research covered a variety of disorders, but his name is best known for his work on senile dementia and CAA. Although Oppenheim was in fact not the first to discover CAA, his neuropathologic observations and inferences on neurodegenerative disease proved to be remarkably faithful to our modern understanding of neurodegenerative diseases...

One of the most important figures in the history of neurohistology, Giuseppe Levi (1872-1965) contributed in numerous ways to neuroscience, particularly in the fields of neuronal plasticity and the understanding of sensory ganglia. His daughter Natalia Ginzburg, née Levi (1916-1991), on the other hand, achieved fame as one of the most celebrated Italian writers of the twentieth century. Lessico Famigliare ( Family Lexicon ), from 1963, is a semibiographical account of her life in which she describes the life and character of her father in detail, providing depth and complexity to a seminal figures in the development of neuroscience...

AIMS: Limited understanding exists regarding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and suicide attempts (SA) in depressed adolescents. The maturation of brain network is crucial during adolescence, yet the abnormal alternations in depressed adolescents with NSSI or NSSI+SA remain poorly understood. METHODS: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected from 114 depressed adolescents, classified into three groups: clinical control (non-self-harm), NSSI only, and NSSI+SA based on self-harm history...

BACKGROUND AND AIM: The Los Angeles Motor Scale (LAMS) is an objective tool that has been used to rapidly assess and predict the presence of large vessel occlusion (LVO) in the pre-hospital setting successfully in several studies. However, studies assessing the relationship between LAMS score and CT perfusion collateral status (CS) markers such as cerebral blood volume (CBV) index, and hypoperfusion intensity ratio (HIR) are sparse. Our study therefore aims to assess the association of admission LAMS score with established CTP CS markers CBV Index and HIR in AIS-LVO cases...

Work at the intersection of philosophy and psychiatry has an extensive and influential history, and has received increased attention recently, with the emergence of professional associations and a growing literature. In this paper, we review key advances in work on philosophy and psychiatry, and their related clinical implications. First, in understanding and categorizing mental disorder, both naturalist and normativist considerations are now viewed as important - psychiatric constructs necessitate a consideration of both facts and values...

BACKGROUND: Rett syndrome (RTT) is a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by mutations in the transcriptional regulator methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MeCP2). After gene transfer in mice, exogenous MeCP2 expression must be regulated to avoid dose-dependent toxicity. SUMMARY: The preclinical gene therapy literature for treating Rett syndrome (RTT) illustrates a duly diligent progression that begins with proof-of-concept studies and advances toward the development of safer, regulated MECP2 viral genome designs...

OBJECTIVE: Apathy and depression are both common after moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and may be especially important to distinguish in older adults with TBI. The authors examined apathy and depression in relation to cognitive performance domains and their potentially unique contribution to psychosocial functioning in this patient population. METHODS: A total of 106 participants (mean±SD age=64±8 years) with chronic moderate to severe TBI (≥1 year) completed questionnaires assessing severity of apathy (Frontal Systems Behavior Scale-apathy subscale) and depression (Geriatric Depression Scale-15) symptoms, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and societal participation...

Representational drift refers to the dynamic nature of neural representations in the brain despite the behavior being seemingly stable. Although drift has been observed in many different brain regions, the mechanisms underlying it are not known. Since intrinsic neural excitability is suggested to play a key role in regulating memory allocation, fluctuations of excitability could bias the reactivation of previously stored memory ensembles and therefore act as a motor for drift. Here, we propose a rate-based plastic recurrent neural network with slow fluctuations of intrinsic excitability...

A brain-to-brain interface (BBI), defined as a combination of neuroimaging and neurostimulation methods to extract and deliver information between brains directly without the need for the peripheral nervous system, is a budding communication technique. A BBI system is made up of two parts known as the brain-computer interface part, which reads a sender's brain activity and digitalizes it, and the computer-brain interface part, which writes the delivered brain activity to a receiving brain. As with other technologies, BBI systems have gone through an evolutionary process since they first appeared...

BACKGROUND: Negative attentional biases and self-schemas have been implicated in the development of depression. Research has indicated that a larger late positive potential (LPP) to negative self-referential words is associated with depression-as well as a maternal history of depression, an indicator of risk. However, it is unclear whether the LPP to self-referential words predicts the actual development of depression. The present study examined whether electrocortical reactivity during self-referential processing predicts the development of depression across adolescence...

INTRODUCTION: Calcified arterial cerebral embolism is a rare occurrence among large and medium vessel occlusions causing ischemic stroke and its diagnosis and treatment is a challenge. The sources of calcified embolism might be a calcific atheroma from the aortic arch and carotid artery, but also heart valve disease has been reported in the literature. Calcified embolism is frequently simultaneous on multiple vascular territories. The prognosis of patients is usually poor, including patients treated by using endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) and this diagnosis could be easily missed in the acute phase...