Brain Sciences, Volume 10, Issue 2

In this brief review, we present evidence of the primary role of learning-associated plasticity in the development of either adaptive or maladaptive coping strategies. Successful interactions with novel stressors foster plasticity within the neural c...

Probiotic bacteria have beneficial effects to the development and maintenance of a healthy microflora that subsequently has health benefits to humans. Some of the health benefits attributed to probiotics have been noted to be via their immune modulat...

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder that can affect around 1–3% of individuals [...]

Cannabis use in adolescents and young adults is linked with aberrant brain structure, although findings to date are inconsistent. We examined whether aerobic fitness moderated the effects of cannabis on cortical surface structure and whether gender m...

This study examined the executive functioning abilities and development profiles of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The participants were 119 children with ASD and 30 typically developing children (age range: 6–12 years) who were...

Identification of genetic markers of a human disease, which is generally sporadic, may become an essential tool for the investigation of its molecular mechanisms. The role of ABCA7 in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was discovered less than ten years...

Amyloid β (Aβ) peptides generated via sequential β- and γ-secretase processing of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) are major etiopathological agents of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, an initial APP cleavage by an &al...

Background: The conversion of glutamic acid into γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is catalyzed by the glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD). Antibodies against this enzyme have been described in neurological disorders, but the pathophysiological role of...

We reanalyzed, modeled and simulated Event-Related Potential (ERP) data from 13 healthy children (Mean age = 5.12, Standard Deviation = 0.75) during a computerized visual sustained target detection task. Extending an ERP-based ACT–R (Adaptive C...

Recently, adeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated gene therapies have attracted clinical interest for treating neurodegenerative diseases including spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), Canavan disease (CD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and Friedreich&rsqu...

Deep Learning (DL) algorithms enabled computational models consist of multiple processing layers that represent data with multiple levels of abstraction. In recent years, usage of deep learning is rapidly proliferating in almost every domain, especia...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative movement disorder with progressive impairments in activities of daily living. With disease progression, people with PD (PwP) need more help and care from their spouses or professional caregivers....

Despite complaints of difficulties in waking socioemotional functioning by individuals with insomnia, only a few studies have investigated emotion processing performance in this group. Additionally, the role of sleep in socioemotional processing has...

Individuals who acquire a second language (L2) after infancy often retain features of their native language (L1) accent. Cross-language priming studies have shown negative effects of L1 accent on L2 comprehension, but the role of specific speech feat...

We study the cognitive processing of visual working memory in three different conditions of memory load and configuration change. Altering this features has been shown to alter the brain’s processing in memory tasks. Most studies dealing with t...

Non-uniform gray distribution and blurred edges often result in bias during the superpixel segmentation of medical images of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). To this end, we propose a novel superpixel segmentation algorithm by integrating texture fe...

Individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) are known to manifest a variety of neurocognitive impairments that can be attributed to alterations in specific brain networks. The current study aims to identify specific features of brain connectivity, ne...

This study examined the cross-cultural generalisability of the First Year Inventory (FYI) on an Italian sample, testing its construct validity, consistency, and structural validity. Six hundred ninety-eight parents of children aged 11–13 months...

Binge drinking is a dangerous pattern of behavior. We tested whether chronically manipulating nucleus accumbens (NAc) activity (via clozapine-N-oxide (CNO) and Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADD)) could produce lasting...

Objective: Oxidation is involved in secondary brain injury after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Increased concentrations of total antioxidant capacity (TAC) in blood at the time of admission for TBI have been found in non-surviving patients. The main...

Ovarian hormones, such as estrogens and progesterone, are known to exert beneficial effects on cognition and some psychiatric disorders. The basis of these effects is not fully understood, but may involve altered cholinergic neurotransmission. This s...

CDKL5 deficiency disorder (CDD) is a complex of clinical symptoms resulting from the presence of non-functional CDKL5 protein, i.e., serine-threonine kinase (previously referred to as STK9), or its complete absence. The clinical picture is characteri...

Background: Clozapine is of high clinical relevance for the management of both treatment-resistant schizophrenia and psychotic disturbances with concurrent drug misuse. Although the molecule presents with a range of well-known side-effects, its disco...

Eating disorder (ED) symptoms often co-occur with non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). This comorbidity is consistent with evidence that trait negative urgency increases risk for both of these phenomena. We previously found that impaired late-stage negat...

Despite the obvious sex differences in many of the most common neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, males and females are still often treated the same from a clinical perspective. Why is that? The simple answer is that there is still too...

This literature review evaluated early behavioral intervention studies of Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) based on their participant exclusion criteria. The studies included were found through searching PsycINFO and PubMed databases, and discussed beh...

Background. Most available large animal extracranial aneurysm models feature healthy non-degenerated aneurysm pouches with stable long-term follow-ups and extensive healing reactions after endovascular treatment. This review focuses on a small subgro...

Although the media can have both negative and positive effects on children’s cognitive and motor functions, its influence on their perceptual bias and manual dexterity is unclear. Thus, we investigated the association between media viewing time...

Cannabis has been associated with deficits in memory performance. However, the neural correlates that may underpin impairments remain unclear. We carried out a systematic review of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies investigating br...

Increasing evidence indicates a relationship between cannabis use and psychosis risk. Specific factors, such as determinants of cannabis use or the genetic profile of cannabis users, appear to moderate this association. The present systematic review...

Background: An unresolved debate lingers over the effect of past behavior on motivational patterns and future behavior stability in the exercise context. Theorists argue that past behavior has a residual effect on future behavior; however, empirical...

A cognitive task, the n-back task, was used to interrogate the cognitive dimension of pain in patients with implanted dorsal root ganglion stimulators (DRGS). Magnetoencephalography (MEG) signals from thirteen patients with implanted DRGS were record...

People with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD) often experience gait and balance problems that substantially impact their quality of life. Pharmacological, surgical, and rehabilitative treatments have limited effectiveness and many PwPD continue to exp...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by deposition and accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) and its corresponding plaques within the brain. Although much debate exists whether these plaques are the cause or the effect of AD, the accumu...

Objective: Cerebrovascular accidents are the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. We hypothesized that cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) of the dentate nuclei and the lower-limb r...

In this work, we propose an interdisciplinary chaos analysis of emotion dysregulation (ED) and emotional vulnerability in adults. One of the main goals was the assessment of incongruences that occur in the evaluation of one’s own emotional dysregulat...

Glioblastoma is a solid, infiltrating, and the most frequent highly malignant primary brain tumor. Our aim was to find the correlation between sex, age, preoperative Karnofsky performance status (KPS), presenting with seizures, and extent of resectio...

The maximum eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix (AM) has been supposed to contain rich information about the corresponding network. An experimental study focused on revealing the meaning and application of the maximum eigenvalue is missing. To this en...

Gait is often considered as an automatic movement but cortical control seems necessary to adapt gait pattern with environmental constraints. In order to study cortical activity during real locomotion, electroencephalography (EEG) appears to be partic...

Three months of exercise training (ET) decreases soluble Aβ₄₀ and Aβ₄₂ levels in an intensity dependent manner early in life in Tg2576 mice (Moore et al., 2016). Here, we examined the effects of 12 months of low- and high- intensity exercis...

It remains a mystery as to how neurons are connected and thereby enable use to think, and volume reconstruction from series of microscopy sections of brains is a vital technique in determining this connectivity. Image registration is a key component;...

This study investigated the synergistic effects of scalp acupuncture (SA) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), known to be effective for cerebral infarction. This outcome-assessor-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trial incl...

Human facial expressions are regarded as a vital indicator of one’s emotion and intention, and even reveal the state of health and wellbeing. Emotional states have been associated with information processing within and between subcortical and c...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may cause damage to the memory cells permanently, which results in the form of dementia. The diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease at an early stage is a problematic task for researchers. For this, machine learning and...

To improve cognitive function, moving the body is strongly recommended; however, evidence regarding the proper training modality is still lacking. The purpose of this study was therefore to assess the effects of high intensity interval training (HIIT...

Animal and transcranial magnetic stimulation motors have evoked potential studies suggesting that the currently used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) intensities produce measurable physiological changes. However, the validity, mechanism...

It has been proposed that the effectiveness of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) as a cognitive enhancement technique may be enhanced by combining the stimulation with concurrent cognitive activity. However, the benefits of such a combination in...

Background: Cross-sectional studies have identified that the prevalence of neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) ranges from 70–89%. However, there are few longitudinal studies determining the impact of NPS on qualit...

The pathophysiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) involves deficits in performance monitoring and adaptive adjustments. Yet, the developmental trajectory and underlying neural correlates of performance monitoring deficits in yout...

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of balance training with electromyogram-triggered functional electrical stimulation (EMG-triggered FES) to improve static balance, dynamic balance, and ankle muscle activation in stroke patients. Fo...