Plos One
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Effects of Low Frequency Prefrontal Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on the N2 Amplitude in a GoNogo Task.
During the last decade, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the prefrontal cortex has become established as a treatment for various mental diseases. The rational of prefrontal stimulation has been adapted from the mode of action known from rTMS using motor-evoked potentials though little is known about the precise effect of rTMS at prefrontal sites. The objective of the current study is to investigate the inhibitory effect of prefrontal 1 Hz rTMS by stimulating the generators of event-related potentials (ERP) which are located in the prefrontal cortex. ⋯ The results argue in favour of an inhibitory effect of 1 Hz rTMS on N2 amplitudes in a GoNogo task. Our findings suggest that rTMS may mildly modulate prefrontally generated ERP immediately after stimulation, even where behavioural effects are not measurable. Thus, combined rTMS-ERP approaches need to be further established in order to serve as paradigms in experimental neuroscience and clinical research.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Randomised phase II trial (NCT00637975) evaluating activity and toxicity of two different escalating strategies for pregabalin and oxycodone combination therapy for neuropathic pain in cancer patients.
Neuropathic pain is commonly associated with cancer. Current treatments include combination opioid and adjuvant therapies, but no guidelines are available for dose escalation strategies. This phase II study compared the efficacy and tolerability of two dose escalation strategies for oxycodone and pregabalin combination therapy. ⋯ Both strategies effectively controlled neuropathic pain, but according to the adopted selection design arm A is preferable to arm B for pain control.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The perception of dynamic and static facial expressions of happiness and disgust investigated by ERPs and fMRI constrained source analysis.
A recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study by our group demonstrated that dynamic emotional faces are more accurately recognized and evoked more widespread patterns of hemodynamic brain responses than static emotional faces. Based on this experimental design, the present study aimed at investigating the spatio-temporal processing of static and dynamic emotional facial expressions in 19 healthy women by means of multi-channel electroencephalography (EEG), event-related potentials (ERP) and fMRI-constrained regional source analyses. ERP analysis showed an increased amplitude of the LPP (late posterior positivity) over centro-parietal regions for static facial expressions of disgust compared to neutral faces. ⋯ The spatio-temporal processing of dynamic stimuli yielded enhanced source activity for emotional compared to neutral conditions in temporal (e.g., fusiform gyrus), and frontal regions (e.g., ventromedial prefrontal cortex, medial and inferior frontal cortex) in early and again in later time windows. The present data support the view that dynamic facial displays trigger more information reflected in complex neural networks, in particular because of their changing features potentially triggering sustained activation related to a continuing evaluation of those faces. A combined fMRI and EEG approach thus provides an advanced insight to the spatio-temporal characteristics of emotional face processing, by also revealing additional neural generators, not identifiable by the only use of an fMRI approach.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Tailored education for older patients to facilitate engagement in falls prevention strategies after hospital discharge--a pilot randomized controlled trial.
The aims of the study were to evaluate the effect of providing tailored falls prevention education in hospital on: i) engagement in targeted falls prevention behaviors in the month after discharge: ii) patients' self-perceived risk and knowledge about falls and falls prevention strategies after receiving the education. ⋯ This tailored education was received positively by older people, resulted in increased engagement in falls prevention strategies after discharge and is feasible to deliver to older hospital patients.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Molecular prognostic prediction for locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma by support vector machine integrated approach.
Accurate prognostication of locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) will benefit patients for tailored therapy. Here, we addressed this issue by developing a mathematical algorithm based on support vector machine (SVM) through integrating the expression levels of multi-biomarkers. ⋯ Our SVM prognostic models designed in the RCT displayed strong power in refining patient prognosis for locally advanced NPC, potentially directing future target therapy against the related signaling pathways.