Brain Sciences, Volume 11, Issue 3

Cortical representations expand during skilled motor learning. We studied a unique model of motor learning with cellular phone texting, where the thumbs are used exclusively to interact with the device and the prominence of use can be seen where 3200...

Background. Language disorder is the most frequent developmental disorder in childhood and it has a significant negative impact on children’s development. The goal of the present review was to systematically analyze the effectiveness of interventions...

Pain is a frequent issue in children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). Its identification and treatment can prove highly challenging for primary care physicians, mainly because of the children’s limited communication abilit...

Recent studies have shown balance recovery can be enhanced via task-specific training, referred to as perturbation-based balance training (PBT). These interventions rely on principles of motor learning where repeated exposure to task-relevant postura...

Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) is a diverse group of Mendelian genetic disorders affecting the upper motor neurons, specifically degeneration of their distal axons in the corticospinal tract. Currently, there are 80 genes or genomic loci (genomi...

In the human brain, aging is characterized by progressive neuronal loss, leading to disruption of synapses and to a degree of failure in neurotransmission. However, there is increasing evidence to support the notion that the aged brain has a remarkab...

Research of treatment options addressing the cognitive deficit associated with neurodegenerative disorders is of particular importance. Application of trimethyltin (TMT) to rats represents a promising model replicating multiple relevant features of s...

Introduction. The Orbitofrontal Cortex (OFC) is a cortical structure that has implications in cognition, memory, reward anticipation, outcome evaluation, decision making, and learning. As such, OFC activity correlates with these cognitive brain abili...

Synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus assists with consolidation and storage of long-lasting memories. Decades of research has provided substantial information on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying synaptic plasticity in the hippocampu...

Inherited neuromuscular disorders (INMD) are a heterogeneous group of rare diseases that involve muscles, motor neurons, peripheral nerves or the neuromuscular junction. Several different lab abnormalities have been linked to INMD: sometimes they are...

It is claimed that investment decision-making should rely on rational analyses based on facts and not emotions. However, trying to make money out of market forecasts can trigger all types of emotional responses. As the question on how investors decid...

Research investigating the neural substrates underpinning parental behaviour has recently gained momentum. Particularly, the hypothalamic medial preoptic area (MPOA) has been identified as a crucial region for parenting. The current study conducted a...

The speech we hear every day is typically “degraded” by competing sounds and the idiosyncratic vocal characteristics of individual speakers. While the comprehension of “degraded” speech is normally automatic, it depends on dynamic and adaptive proces...

The Met allele of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene confers reduced cortical BDNF expression and associated neurobehavioral changes. BDNF signaling influences the survival, development, and synaptic function of cortical networks. Here...

A number of studies report the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in patients taking statins, but the results are inconsistent. (1) Background: The present study investigated the cross-sectional association between previous statin use and the risk...

Mirror neuron network (MNN) is associated with one’s ability to recognize and interpret others’ actions and emotions and has a crucial role in cognition, perception, and social interaction. MNN connectivity and its relation to social attributes, such...

Exposure to gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) in utero is associated with a range of adverse cognitive and neurological outcomes. Previously, we reported altered neuroplastic responses to continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) in GDM-exposed ado...

Background. Serious mental illness (SMI) represents a category of psychiatric disorders characterized by specific difficulties of personal and social functioning, derived from suffering severe and persistent mental health problems. Aims. We wanted to...

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition associated with increased levels of anxiety. However, whether autism is related to heightened test anxiety as one situation-specific type of anxiety has not yet been examined. This question may be relevant for...

The present preliminary case-control study was undertaken to detect the potential association of six single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in oxidative stress-related genes: SOD2 (c.47T > C; rs4880), CAT (c.-89A > T; rs7943316), GPX4 (c.660T &...

Background: The prevalence of neural autoantibodies in epilepsy of unknown etiology varies among studies. We aimed to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine the pooled global prevalence and the prevalence for each antibody. Method...

(1) Background: Both cerebral vascular disorders and cognitive decline increase in incidence with age. The role of cerebral vascular disease and hemodynamic changes in the development of cognitive deficits is controversial. The objective of this stud...

The resilience of high-grade gliomas (HGGs) against conventional chemotherapies is due to their heterogeneous genetic landscape, adaptive phenotypic changes, and immune escape mechanisms. Innovative immunotherapies have been developed to counteract t...

Although the brain signatures of adaptive human parenting are well documented, the cortical features associated with maladaptive caregiving are underexplored. We investigated whether cortical thickness and surface area vary in a small group of mother...

Background: The global active prevalence of migraines is approximately 14.7%. Oxygen therapy may reduce the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) which often have various negative side effects. The purpose of this systematic review is...

We describe a case of severe headaches, double vision, and progressive vision loss secondary to a ruptured intracranial cyst (IAC) in a 31-year-old woman with no relevant past medical history. The case is peculiar because drainage of the subdural hyg...

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)-based fiber tractography is routinely used in clinical applications to visualize major white matter tracts, such as the corticospinal tract (CST), optic radiation (OR), and arcuate fascicle (AF). Nevertheless, DTI is li...

Background: Augmentation (AUG) in patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS) can be associated with impulse control disorder (ICD) symptoms, such as compulsive sexual behavior, gambling disorder or compulsive shopping. In this study, we wanted to ass...

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive method used to investigate neurophysiological integrity of the human neuromotor system. We describe in detail, the methodology of a single pulse TMS protocol that was performed in a large coho...

Background: Ischemic stroke is one of the major causes of disability and mortality. Its effects on the autonomic nervous system (ANS) through nonlinear heart rate variability (HRV) and pulse transit time (PTT) have not been well explored among Thai p...

In this article we present the study of electroencephalography (EEG) traits for emotion recognition process using a videogame as a stimuli tool, and considering two different kind of information related to emotions: arousal–valence self-assesses answ...

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) has emerged as a promising technique to non-invasively modulate the endogenous oscillations in the human brain. Despite its clinical potential to be applied in routine rehabilitation therapies, the...

Self-consciousness is a personality trait associated with an individual’s concern regarding observable (public) and unobservable (private) aspects of self. Prompted by previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, we examined possible...

⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC represents a useful tool in tumor contouring for radiosurgery planning. We present a case series of patients affected by meningiomas on who we performed ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC positron emission tomography (PET)/CT pre-operatively, a subgroup of wh...

Neuroscience research links alexithymia, the difficulty in identifying and describing feelings and emotions, with left hemisphere dominance and/or right hemisphere deficit. To provide behavioral evidence for this neuroscientific hypothesis, we explor...

A pathological hallmark of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is corticospinal tract (CST) degeneration resulting in upper motor neuron (UMN) dysfunction. No quantitative test is available to easily assess UMN pathways. Brain neuroimaging in ALS pro...

Improving quality of life (QoL) is central to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) treatment. This Germany-wide, multicenter cross-sectional study analyses the impact of different symptom-specific treatments and ALS variants on QoL. Health-related QoL...

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor and non-motor symptoms, among which are bradykinesia, rigidity, tremor as well as mental symptoms such as dementia. The underlying cause of Parkinson disease is d...

Post-stroke rehabilitation often aims to increase walking speeds, as faster walking is associated with improved functional status and quality of life. However, for successful community ambulation, ability to modulate (increase and decrease) walking s...

The antisense oligonucleotide nusinersen was the first drug treatment available for all types of 5q-spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The dosing regime has been derived from pivotal clinical trials in infants and children. The efficacy of nusinersen in...

The human brain carries out cognitive control for the inhibition of habitual behaviors by suppressing some familiar but inappropriate behaviors instead of engaging specific goal-directed behavior flexibly in a given situation. To examine the characte...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating and fatal neurodegenerative disease arising from the combined degeneration of upper motor neurons (UMN) in the motor cortex, and lower motor neurons (LMN) in the brainstem and spinal cord. This dua...

Background: We aimed to assess the differences between menstrual and non-menstrual headache in women with chronic migraine treated with erenumab. Methods: We included fertile women from a single center. Patients were defined as responders to erenumab...

Background: Observational research plays an important part in developmental research due to its noninvasiveness. However, it has been hardly applied to investigate efficacy of the child–therapist interaction in the context of naturalistic development...

(1) Background: Monoamine neurotransmitters play essential roles in the normal functioning of our nervous system. However, the metabolism of monoamine neurotransmitters is accompanied by the production of neurotoxic metabolites, and inefficient remov...

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) commonly experience problems with the processing of tactile stimuli and poor quality of sleep. The aim of the present study was to analyze whether tactile stimuli modulation (TSM) disorders might be l...

Auditory beats are amplitude-modulated signals (monaural beats) or signals that subjectively cause the perception of an amplitude modulation (binaural beats). We investigated the effects of monaural and binaural 5 Hz beat stimulation on neural activi...

Background: Evidence suggested that inflammation may be involved in the etiopathogenesis of bipolar disorder (BD), a chronic psychiatric condition affecting around 2–3% of the general population. However, little is known regarding potential gender di...

Assessment of semantic processing capacities often relies on verbal tasks which are, however, sensitive to impairments at several language processing levels. Especially for persons with aphasia there is a strong need for a tool that measures semantic...

Background: Vestibular compensation (VC) after unilateral labyrinthectomy (UL) consists of the initial and late processes. These processes can be evaluated based on the decline in the frequency of spontaneous nystagmus (SN) and the number of MK801-in...