Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Feb 2014
Clinical TrialDeep brain stimulation for obsessive-compulsive disorders: long-term analysis of quality of life.
To evaluate the long-term effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) on quality of life (QOL) in therapy-refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients. ⋯ http://isrctn.org identifier: ISRCTN23255677.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Feb 2014
Feelings of loneliness, but not social isolation, predict dementia onset: results from the Amsterdam Study of the Elderly (AMSTEL).
Known risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias include medical conditions, genetic vulnerability, depression, demographic factors and mild cognitive impairment. The role of feelings of loneliness and social isolation in dementia is less well understood, and prospective studies including these risk factors are scarce. ⋯ Feeling lonely rather than being alone is associated with an increased risk of clinical dementia in later life and can be considered a major risk factor that, independently of vascular disease, depression and other confounding factors, deserves clinical attention. Feelings of loneliness may signal a prodromal stage of dementia. A better understanding of the background of feeling lonely may help us to identify vulnerable persons and develop interventions to improve outcome in older persons at risk of dementia.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Feb 2014
A structural MRI study of motor conversion disorder: evidence of reduction in thalamic volume.
To investigate potential abnormalities in subcortical brain structures in conversion disorder (CD) compared with controls using a region of interest (ROI) approach. ⋯ These differences may reflect a primary disease process in this area or be secondary effects of the disorder, for example, resulting from limb disuse. Larger, longitudinal structural imaging studies will be required to confirm the findings and explore whether they are primary or secondary to CD.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Feb 2014
Depressive symptoms in Parkinson's disease are related to reduced [123I]FP-CIT binding in the caudate nucleus.
Depression is a common neuropsychiatric symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD). In previous research, PD-related depression was associated with striatal dopaminergic deficits, presumably due to degeneration of brainstem dopaminergic projections. Segregated areas of the striatum are crucially involved in various parallelly arranged cortical-striatal-thalamocortical circuits and serve functions in, among others, motor control or emotion. This suggests regional specificity of dopaminergic deficits in the striatum in motor and depressive symptoms in PD. ⋯ These results suggest that depressive symptoms in PD are associated with dopamine loss in the caudate nucleus, possibly related to degeneration of dopaminergic projections from the ventral tegmental area, while motor symptoms are associated with low dopamine signalling to the putamen and loss of nigrostriatal projections. This is consistent with the neuroanatomy of partially segregated cortical-striatal-thalamocortical circuits and supports the role of dysfunctional associative and motivational circuits in PD-related depression.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Feb 2014
The elbow flex-ex: a new sign to detect unilateral upper extremity non-organic paresis.
To examine a new neurological sign that uses synergistic oppositional movements of the arms to evaluate for non-organic upper extremity weakness. ⋯ The elbow flex-ex sign is useful in differentiating between functional and organic arm paresis.