No abstract

The aim of this work was to evaluate the relationship between ipsilateral amygdala dysfunction in unilateral mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) and remote temporal, frontal, and parietal brain structures and to identify their association with theory of mind (ToM) abilities. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were acquired from MTLE patients with unilateral hippocampal sclerosis (n = 28; 16 left-sided) and healthy controls (HC, n = 18) watching an animated fearful face paradigm. To explore functional connectivity, we used independent component analysis (ICA) of fMRI data to characterize possible amygdala network alterations that may be caused by lateralized amygdala dysfunction. We furthermore investigated the relationship between activation within the amygdala network and ToM task performance. The pattern of amygdalar BOLD activation observed in response to an animated fearful face paradigm was bilateral amygdalar activation in HC and amygdala activation lateralized to the contralateral side in MTLE patients. In HC, a hemispheric asymmetry of the amygdala network was present with amygdala co-activation in predominantly left temporolateral and frontal brain structures. In MTLE patients, the observed asymmetry of amygdala connectivity was modulated by the side of pathology and the extent of amygdalar connectivity to the parahippocampal gyrus and insula was related to ToM test performance. These findings suggest that ipsilateral amygdalar dysfunction in MTLE is associated with alterations in remote temporal and frontal brain areas. The study of psychiatric and neurological disorders via network analysis allows for a shift of focus away from viewing dysfunctions of individual structures to a pathological network that possibly gives rise to a variety of symptoms.

Efficacy of future treatments depends on biomarkers identifying patients with mild cognitive impairment at highest risk for transitioning to Alzheimer's disease. Here, we applied recently developed analysis techniques to investigate cross-sectional differences in subcortical shape and volume alterations in patients with stable mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n = 23, age range 59–82, 47.8% female), future converters at baseline (n = 10, age range 66–84, 90% female) and at time of conversion (age range 68–87) compared to group-wise age and gender matched healthy control subjects (n = 23, age range 61–81, 47.8% female; n = 10, age range 66–82, 80% female; n = 10, age range 68–82, 70% female). Additionally, we studied cortical thinning and global and local measures of hippocampal atrophy as known key imaging markers for Alzheimer's disease. Apart from bilateral striatal volume reductions, no morphometric alterations were found in cognitively stable patients. In contrast, we identified shape alterations in striatal and thalamic regions in future converters at baseline and at time of conversion. These shape alterations were paralleled by Alzheimer's disease like patterns of left hemispheric morphometric changes (cortical thinning in medial temporal regions, hippocampal total and subfield atrophy) in future converters at baseline with progression to similar right hemispheric alterations at time of conversion. Additionally, receiver operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that subcortical shape alterations may outperform hippocampal volume in identifying future converters at baseline. These results further confirm the key role of early cortical thinning and hippocampal atrophy in the early detection of Alzheimer's disease. But first and foremost, and by distinguishing future converters but not patients with stable cognitive abilities from cognitively normal subjects, our results support the value of early subcortical shape alterations and reduced hippocampal subfield volumes as potential markers for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease.

Background: A small number of previous studies have provided evidence that cocaine users (CU) exhibit impairments in complex social cognition tasks, while the more basic facial emotion recognition is widely unaffected. However, prosody and cross-modal emotion processing has not been systematically investigated in CU so far. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to assess complex multisensory emotion processing in CU in comparison to controls and to examine a potential association with drug use patterns.Method: The abbreviated version of the comprehensive affect testing system (CATS-A) was used to measure emotion perception across the three channels of facial affect, prosody, and semantic content in 58 CU and 48 healthy control (HC) subjects who were matched for age, sex, verbal intelligence, and years of education.Results: CU had significantly lower scores than controls in the quotient scales of “emotion recognition” and “prosody recognition” and the subtests “conflicting prosody/meaning – attend to prosody” and “match emotional prosody to emotional face” either requiring to attend to prosody or to integrate cross-modal information. In contrast, no group difference emerged for the “affect recognition quotient.” Cumulative cocaine doses and duration of cocaine use correlated negatively with emotion processing.Conclusion: CU show impaired cross-modal integration of different emotion processing channels particularly with regard to prosody, whereas more basic aspects of emotion processing such as facial affect perception are comparable to the performance of HC.

Our data demonstrate significant positive effects of treatment with PR-fampridine over 2 years on different cognitive domains as well as fatigue and depression in a cohort of PwMS. These findings imply that PR-fampridine should be considered as symptomatic treatment improving aspects of cognition, fatigue and depression in PwMS.