Neuroscience
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A causal role of right TPJ in prosocial learning: a tDCS study.
Prosocial behavior is a common and important aspect of everyday social life. To behave prosocially, we need to learn the consequences of our actions for other people, known as prosocial learning. Previous studies have identified the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) as the critical neurological substrate for prosocial behavior. ⋯ Participants were able to learn to obtain rewards for themselves or others, and learning performance in the self-learning condition was better than that in the prosocial-learning condition. However, anodal tDCS over the rTPJ significantly improved learning performance in the prosocial-learning condition. These results indicate that the rTPJ plays a causal role in prosocial learning.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
DISRUPTED CORTICAL HOMEOSTATIC PLASTICITY DUE TO PROLONGED CAPSAICIN-INDUCED PAIN.
Homeostatic plasticity (HP) regulates cortical excitability (CE) stability but is disrupted in persistent pain conditions. This study investigated how prolonged experimental pain affects HP and if pain relief modulates disrupted HP. Twenty-four healthy participants were randomised into a PainRelief or NoPainRelief group and attended four sessions; two sessions on consecutive days, separated by two weeks. ⋯ Conversely, homeostatic responses were induced at all time points for the placebo condition. Capsaicin pain disrupts HP which is not restored by ice-induced pain relief. Future research may explore the prevention of HP disruption by targeting capsaicin-induced nociception but not pain perception.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Can brain activities of guided metaphorical restructuring predict therapeutic changes?
The present study examined whether brain activities of metaphorical restructuring could predict improvements in emotion and general self-efficacy (GSES). Sixty-two anxious graduates were randomly assigned to either the metaphor group (n = 31) or the literal group (n = 31). After completing the pretest (T1), the participants were first presented with micro-counseling dialogues (MCD) to guide metaphorical or literal restructuring, and their functional brain activities were simultaneously recorded. ⋯ One important limitation is that the results should be interpreted with caution when generalizing to clinical anxiety samples due to the participants were graduate students with anxiety symptoms rather than clinical sample. These results indicated that metaphor restructuring produced greater symptom improvements, and activation in the hippocampus and IFG could predict these symptom improvements. This suggests that the activation of the two regions during the restructuring intervention may be a neural marker for symptom improvements.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Head down tilt 15° in acute ischemic stroke with poor collaterals: a randomized preclinical trial.
Cerebral collaterals are recruited after arterial occlusion with a protective effect on tissue outcome in acute ischemic stroke. Head down tilt 15° (HDT15) is a simple, low cost and accessible procedure that could be applied as an emergency treatment, before recanalization therapies, with the aim to increase cerebral collateral flow. Spontaneously hypertensive rats have been shown to display anatomical differences in morphology and function of cerebral collaterals, compared to other rat strains, resulting in an overall poor collateral circulation. ⋯ HDT15 application increased cerebral perfusion (+16.6% versus +6.1%; p = 0.0040) and resulted in a small reduction of infarct size (83.6 versus 107.1 mm3; - 21.89%; p = 0.0272), but it was not associated with early neurological improvement, compared to flat position. Our study suggests that the response to HDT15 during MCA occlusion is dependent on baseline collaterals. Nonetheless, HDT15 promoted a mild improvement of cerebral hemodynamics even in subjects with poor collaterals, without safety concerns.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Treadmill walking maintains dual-task gait performance and reduces frontopolar cortex activation in healthy adults.
Studies examining dual-task gait (DTG) have used varying conditions such as overground or treadmill walking, however it is not known whether brain activation patterns differ during these conditions. Therefore, this study compared oxyhaemoglobin (O2Hb) responses of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during overground and treadmill walking. A total of 30 participants (14M/16F) were recruited in a randomized crossover study comparing overground and treadmill walking under single- and dual-task (STG and DTG) conditions. ⋯ Increased activation was seen in the left and right DLPFC during DTG but did not differ between treadmill and overground walking. Our results support the concept of improved gait efficiency during treadmill walking, indicated by the lack of change in STG and DTG performance and concomitant with a reduction in FPC activation. These findings suggest different neural strategies underpinning treadmill and overground walking, which should be considered when designing gait assessment and rehabilitation interventions.