Ankerregan6695

Many mental illnesses share overlapping or similar clinical symptoms, confounding the diagnosis. It is important to systematically characterize the degree to which unique and similar changing patterns are reflective of brain disorders. Increasing sharing initiatives on neuroimaging data have provided unprecedented opportunities to study brain disorders. However, it is still an open question on replicating and translating findings across studies. Standardized approaches for capturing reproducible and comparable imaging markers are greatly needed. Here, we propose a pipeline based on the priori-driven independent component analysis, NeuroMark, which is capable of estimating brain functional network measures from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data that can be used to link brain network abnormalities among different datasets, studies, and disorders. NeuroMark automatically estimates features adaptable to each individual subject and comparable across datasets/studies/disorders by taking advantage oforder.

In multiple sclerosis (MS), the presence of a paramagnetic rim at the edge of non-gadolinium-enhancing lesions indicates perilesional chronic inflammation. Patients featuring a higher paramagnetic rim lesion burden tend to have more aggressive disease. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture (RimNet) for automated detection of paramagnetic rim lesions in MS employing multiple magnetic resonance (MR) imaging contrasts.

Imaging data were acquired at 3 Tesla on three different scanners from two different centers, totaling 124 MS patients, and studied retrospectively. Paramagnetic rim lesion detection was independently assessed by two expert raters on T2*-phase images, yielding 462 rim-positive (rim+) and 4857 rim-negative (rim-) lesions. RimNet was designed using 3D patches centered on candidate lesions in 3D-EPI phase and 3D FLAIR as input to two network branches. The interconnection of branches at both the first network blocks and the last fan accuracy of 89.5% and a Dice coefficient (or F1 score) of 83.5%.

The proposed prototype showed promising performance, supporting the usage of RimNet for speeding up and standardizing the paramagnetic rim lesions analysis in MS.

The proposed prototype showed promising performance, supporting the usage of RimNet for speeding up and standardizing the paramagnetic rim lesions analysis in MS.Skeletal muscle is an important secretory organ in mammals, producing myriad chemical mediators ("myokines") with distinct biological action in different tissues, including anti-inflammatory activity. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have recently been identified as a mode of myokine transport from muscle, facilitating such anti-inflammatory activity. In this report, we have demonstrated that high-intensity ultrasound (US) strongly induces EV secretion from cultured myotubes without a reduction in cell viability. High-intensity US of 3.0 W/cm2 with 20% duty cycle increased the number of EVs by 2-fold compared to control at 6 h. This effect was specific to EVs in the 100-150 nm size range. Thus, high-intensity US is a novel modality for inducing myocellular EV release and may hold therapeutic value.Major depressive disorder is a stress-related disease associated with brain metabolic dysregulation in the glutamine-glutamate/γ-aminobutyric acid (Gln-Glu/GABA) cycle. Recent studies have demonstrated that microbiome-gut-brain interactions have the potential to influence mental health. The hypothesis of this study was that Lactobacillus rhamnosus JB-1 (LR-JB1™) dietary supplementation has a positive impact on neuro-metabolism which can be quantified in vivo using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). A rat model of depressive-like disorder, chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS), was used. Baseline comparisons of MRS and behavior were obtained in a control group and in a stressed group subjected to CUMS. Of the 22 metabolites measured using MRS, stressed rats had significantly lower concentrations of GABA, glutamate, glutamine + glutathione, glutamate + glutamine, total creatine, and total N-acetylaspartate (tNAA). Stressed rats were then separated into 2 groups and supplemented with either LR-JB1™ or placebo and re-evaluated after 4 weeks of continued CUMS. BMS202 The LR-JB1™ microbiotic diet restored these metabolites to levels previously observed in controls, while the placebo diet resulted in further significant decrease of glutamate, total choline, and tNAA. LR-JB1™ treated animals also exhibited calmer and more relaxed behavior, as compared with placebo treated animals. In summary, significant cerebral biochemical downregulation of major brain metabolites following prolonged stress were measured in vivo using MRS, and these decreases were reversed using a microbiotic dietary supplement of LR-JB1™, even in the presence of continued stress, which also resulted in a reduction of stress-induced behavior in a rat model of depressive-like disorder.

A phenotype of isolated parkinsonism mimicking Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease (IPD) is a rare clinical presentation of GRN and C9orf72 mutations, the major genetic causes of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). It still remains controversial if this association is fortuitous or not, and which clinical clues could reliably suggest a genetic FTD etiology in IPD patients. This study aims to describe the clinical characteristics of FTD mutation carriers presenting with IPD phenotype, provide neuropathological evidence of the mutation's causality, and specifically address their "red flags" according to current IPD criteria.

Seven GRN and C9orf72 carriers with isolated parkinsonism at onset, and three patients from the literature were included in this study. To allow better delineation of their phenotype, the presence of supportive, exclusion and "red flag" features from MDS criteria were analyzed for each case.

Amongst the ten patients (5 GRN, 5 C9orf72), seven fulfilled probable IPD criteria during all the diseastions of GRN and C9orf72 mutations.

Genetic inheritance plays key roles in patients with ataxia and/or spastic paraplegia in consanguineous families. This study aims to clarify the genetic spectrum of patients with autosomal recessive hereditary ataxia and spastic paraplegias (AR-HA/HSPs) in consanguineous families.

A total of 36 AR-HA/HSPs consanguineous pedigrees from China were recruited into this study. Next generation sequencing (NGS), guided by homozygosity mapping (HM), was applied to identify the pathogenic variants in known genes or novel candidate genes.

We totally made molecular diagnosis in 47.2% (17/36) of AR-HA/HSPs families. Among them, 13 AR-HAs carried pathogenic variants in SETX (n=4), SACS (n=2), STUB1, HSD17B4, NEU1, ADCK3, TPP1, PLA2G6 and MTCL1, while four AR-HSPs carried pathogenic variants in SPG11, ZFYVE26, ATP13A2 and ABCD1. One homozygous nonsense mutation in MRPS27 was identified in an AR-HA family, which was potentially a novel candidate gene of AR-HA.

HM and NGS can serve as an efficient molecular diagnostic tool for AR-HA/HSPs in consanguineous families.