1/247. Integration of preoperative and intraoperative functional brain mapping in a frameless stereotactic environment for lesions near eloquent cortex. Technical note.The authors present a method of incorporating preoperative noninvasive functional brain mapping data into the frameless stereotactic magnetic resonance (MR) imaging dataset used for image-guided resection of brain lesions located near eloquent cortex. They report the use of functional (f)MR imaging and magnetic source (MS) imaging for preoperative mapping of eloquent cortex in difficult cases of brain tumor resection such as those in which there are large expansive masses or in which reoperations are required and the anatomy is distorted from prior treatments. To correlate methods of preoperative and intraoperative mapping localization directly, the authors have developed techniques of importing preoperative MS and fMR imaging data into an image-guided frameless stereotactic computer workstation. The data appear as a seamless overlay on the same preoperative volumetric MR imaging dataset used for stereotactic guidance during the operation. Intraoperatively identified functional locations mapped by cortical stimulation are recorded as digitally registered points. This approach should prove useful in assessing the accuracy and reliability of various preoperative functional brain mapping techniques.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
2/247. 18Fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (18FDG) PET scan of the brain in type IV 3-methylglutaconic aciduria: clinical and MRI correlations.The clinical, 18fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18FDG PET) and the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scan characteristics of four patients diagnosed to have 3-methylglutaconic aciduria were reviewed retrospectively. The disease has a characteristic clinical pattern. The initial presentations were developmental delay, hypotonia, and severe failure to thrive. Later, progressive encephalopathy with rigidity and quadriparesis were observed, followed by severe dystonia and choreoathetosis. Finally, the patients became severely demented and bedridden. The 18FDG PET scans showed progressive disease, explaining the neurological status. It could be classified into three stages. Stage I: absent 18FDG uptake in the heads of the caudate, mild decreased thalamic and cerebellar metabolism. Stage II: absent uptake in the anterior half and posterior quarter of the putamina, mild-moderate decreased uptake in the cerebral cortex more prominently in the parieto-temporal lobes. Progressive decreased thalamic and cerebellar uptake. Stage III: absent uptake in the putamina and severe decreased cortical uptake consistent with brain atrophy and further decrease uptake in the cerebellum. The presence of both structural and functional changes in the brain, demonstrated by the combined use of MRI and 18FDG PET scan, with good clinical correlation, make the two techniques complementary in the imaging evaluation of 3-methylglutaconic aciduria.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.16666666666667keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
3/247. multimodal imaging of residual function and compensatory resource allocation in cortical atrophy: a case study of parietal lobe function in a patient with Huntington's disease.In a case of Huntington's disease (HD) with dementia and pronounced parieto-frontal atrophy, the functional state of the affected regions was investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET). It was observed that although parietal areas showed extensive atrophy and reduced resting glucose metabolism, the patient performed with similar accuracy but with longer response time in a visuospatial task compared with healthy control subjects. At the same time, the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI signal in these areas, which are involved in visuospatial processing, showed a similar task-dependent modulation as in control subjects. The signal amplitude (signal percent change) of the task-dependent activation was even higher for the HD patient than in the control group. This residual functionality of parietal areas involved in visuospatial processing could account for the patient's performance in the task concerned, which contrasted with his poor performance in other cognitive tasks. The increased percent-signal change suggests that a higher neuronal effort was necessary to reach a similar degree of accuracy as in control subjects, fitting well with the longer reaction time. We propose that fMRI should be considered as a tool for the assessment of functionality of morphologically abnormal cortex and for the investigation of compensatory resource allocation in neurodegenerative disorders.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.16666666666667keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
4/247. Treatment of seizures in subcortical laminar heterotopia with corpus callosotomy and lamotrigine.Focal and generalized cortical dysgeneses are sometimes seen on the magnetic resonance images (MRI) of patients with epilepsy. Subcortical laminar heterotopia are bilateral collections of gray matter in the centrum semiovale that resemble a band or "double cortex" on MRI. We studied one male and two female patients with subcortical laminar heterotopia who had moderate to severe developmental delay, early-onset epilepsy, and medically refractory seizures. Atonic, atypical absence, tonic, myoclonic, complex partial, and generalized tonic-clonic seizures were recorded. Interictal and ictal electroencephalographic patterns were generalized and, less commonly, multifocal. Two years after corpus callosotomy, one patient was free of generalized tonic-clonic and atonic seizures, but the other patient who had undergone callosotomy had no significant reduction in seizure frequency. With lamotrigine treatment, the patient who had not had surgery had complete cessation of monthly episodes of status epilepticus and a dramatic reduction of generalized tonic-clonic seizures, and the other patient who received lamotrigine had a 50% reduction of her atonic seizures. In patients with subcortical laminar heterotopia, atonic and generalized tonic-clonic seizures can be substantially reduced or eliminated by corpus callosotomy or treatment with lamotrigine.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.16666666666667keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
5/247. Functional imaging in periventricular nodular heterotopia with the use of FDG-PET and HMPAO-SPECT.We analyzed the interictal [18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography (FGD-PET) and single photon emission computed tomography with technetium-99m-hexamethyl-propyleneamine oxime (HMPAO-SPECT) in two epileptic patients with periventricular nodular heterotopia (PNH). In both cases, we found both the glucose metabolism and the perfusion of PNH to be almost identical to those of the normal cerebral cortex. The metabolic activity and perfusion in the heterotopic gray matter in a subependymal white matter area probably represent the glucose metabolism and perfusion of the abnormally located gray matter rather than a subclinical ictal phenomenon. FDG-PET and HMPAO-SPECT were thus found to be a useful complement to magnetic resonance imaging in the evaluation of PNH.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.16666666666667keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
6/247. consciousness in congenitally decorticate children: developmental vegetative state as self-fulfilling prophecy.According to traditional neurophysiological theory, consciousness requires neocortical functioning, and children born without cerebral hemispheres necessarily remain indefinitely in a developmental vegetative state. Four children between 5 and 17 years old are reported with congenital brain malformations involving total or near-total absence of cerebral cortex but who, nevertheless, possessed discriminative awareness: for example, distinguishing familiar from unfamiliar people and environments, social interaction, functional vision, orienting, musical preferences, appropriate affective responses, and associative learning. These abilities may reflect 'vertical' plasticity of brainstem and diencephalic structures. The relative rarity of manifest consciousness in congenitally decorticate children could be due largely to an inherent tendency of the label 'developmental vegetative state' to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.16666666666667keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
7/247. Basal forebrain amnesia: does the nucleus accumbens contribute to human memory?OBJECTIVE: To analyse amnesia caused by basal forebrain lesions. methods: A single case study of a patient with amnesia after bleeding into the anterior portion of the left basal ganglia. Neuropsychological examination included tests of attention, executive function, working memory, recall, and recognition of verbal and non-verbal material, and recall from remote semantic and autobiographical memory. The patient's MRI and those of other published cases of basal forebrain amnesia were reviewed to specify which structures within the basal forebrain are crucial for amnesia. RESULTS: attention and executive function were largely intact. There was anterograde amnesia for verbal material which affected free recall and recognition. With both modes of testing the patient produced many false positive responses and intrusions when lists of unrelated words had been memorised. However, he confabulated neither on story recall nor in day to day memory, nor in recall from remote memory. The lesion affected mainly the nucleus accumbens, but encroached on the inferior limb of the capsula interna and the most ventral portion of the nucleus caudatus and globus pallidus, and there was evidence of some atrophy of the head of the caudate nucleus. The lesion spared the nucleus basalis Meynert, the diagnonal band, and the septum, which are the sites of cholinergic cell concentrations. CONCLUSIONS: It seems unlikely that false positive responses were caused by insufficient strategic control of memory retrieval. This speaks against a major role of the capsular lesion which might disconnect the prefrontal cortex from the thalamus. It is proposed that the lesion of the nucleus accumbens caused amnesia.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.16666666666667keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
8/247. Postencephalitic focal retrograde amnesia after bilateral anterior temporal lobe damage.BACKGROUND: Marked retrograde amnesia with no or almost no anterograde amnesia is rare. Recently, a combination of ventrolateral prefrontal and temporopolar cortical lesions has been suggested as the cause of such isolated or focal retrograde amnesia. It is also assumed that when the right-sided cortical structures are damaged, autobiographical episodic memories are affected. OBJECTIVE: To search for new anatomic substrates for focal retrograde amnesia. methods: We performed extensive neuropsychological tests and obtained detailed neuroimages on a 43-year-old woman who showed a severe, persistent retrograde amnesia but only a limited anterograde amnesia after probable herpes simplex encephalitis. RESULTS: Tests of autobiographical memory revealed that she had a memory loss extending back to her childhood for both semantics and incidents; however, the ability to recall specific episodes appeared much more severely impaired than the ability to recall factual information about her past. The patient also showed profound impairments in recalling public memories; however, her scores improved nearly to a control level on forced-choice recognition memory tasks, although the recall of memories for a decade just before her illness remained mildly impaired. MRI revealed focal pathologies in the temporal poles and the anterior parts of the inferotemporal lobes on both sides, predominantly on the left, with some extension to the anterior parts of the medial temporal lobes. There was additional damage to the left insular cortex and its surrounding structures but no evidence of frontal lobe damage on MRIs or cognitive tests. CONCLUSIONS: A profound retrograde amnesia may be produced by damage to the bilateral temporal poles and anterior inferotemporal lobes in the absence of frontal lobe pathologies, and a dense and persistent episodic old memory loss can arise even with a relatively small lesion in the right anterior temporal lobe if it is combined with extensive damage to the left.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.16666666666667keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
9/247. meningioma with meningioangiomatosis: a condition mimicking invasive meningiomas in children and young adults: report of two cases and review of the literature.Meningioangiomatosis is a malformative meningovascular proliferation that occurs sporadically and in patients with neurofibromatosis type 2. Its histologic features of perivascular proliferation of elongated fibroblast and meningothelial cells trapping islands of gliotic cortex may be erroneously interpreted as invasion when an overlying meningioma is present. We report two cases of meningioangiomatosis associated with meningioma and review the literature on the subject for a total of six cases. The age of patients ranged from 9 months to 33 years. All cases were single lesions, and none had clinical evidence of neurofibromatosis type 2. Meningiomas in children have been regarded as having more aggressive behavior than their adult counterparts, with more frequent invasion of the underlying brain. The lack of correlation between brain invasion and recurrence observed in series of meningiomas in young patients may suggest that some of these lesions are meningioangiomatosis associated with meningioma rather than invasive meningiomas.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.16666666666667keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
10/247. Aicardi-Goutieres syndrome: a genetic microangiopathy?Aicardi-Goutieres syndrome (AGS) (McKusick 225750) is an autosomal recessive disease with onset in the 1st year of life, resulting in progressive microcephaly, calcification of cerebral white matter, thalamus and basal ganglia, generalized cerebral demyelination and a chronic low-grade CSF lymphocytosis, without evidence of infection. We report the autopsy of a patient who died with this disorder at the age of 17 years. Findings were severe microencephaly, diffuse but inhomogeneous cerebral white matter loss with associated astrocytosis, calcific deposits in the white matter, thalami and basal ganglia. neocortex and cerebellar cortex were affected by wedge-shaped microinfarctions. Small vessels showed calcification in the media, adventitia and perivascular spaces. These findings are similar to some previous publications that in retrospect may have been AGS, but this is the first reported cerebral microangiopathy in which the diagnosis AGS was made during lifetime. This report provides evidence that microangiopathy plays a significant role in the pathogenesis of AGS.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.33333333333333keywords = cortex (Clic here for more details about this article) |
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