1,720,957 research outputs found
Neural Correlates for Apathy: Frontal-Prefrontal and Parietal Cortical- Subcortical Circuits
No full textApathy is usually defined as the overt manifestation of a lack of motivation, and decreased emotional engagement, lack of concern or indifference, and a flattening of affect. Apathy is a major clinical condition which strongly impacts in every day life events, affects the common daily living abilities, reduced the inner goal directed behavior, and gives the heaviest burden on caregivers. Is a quite common comorbidity of many neurological disease, However, there is no definite consensus on the role of apathy in clinical practice, no definite data on anatomical circuits involved in its development, and no definite instrument to detect it at bedside. As a general observation, the occurrence of apathy is connected to damage of prefrontal cortex (PFC) and basal ganglia; “emotional affective” apathy may be related to the orbitomedial PFC and ventral striatum; “cognitive apathy” may be associated with dysfunction of lateral PFC and dorsal caudate nuclei; deficit of “autoactivation” may be due to bilateral lesions of the internal portion of globus pallidus, bilateral paramedian thalamic lesions, or the dorsomedial portion of PFC. On the other hand, apathy severity has been connected to neurofibrillary tangles density in the anterior cingulate gyrus and to grey matter atrophy in the anterior cingulate (ACC) and in the left medial frontal cortex, confirmed by functional imaging studies. Specifically, these regions are involved in evaluating action and outcomes and, via the basolateral amygdala and nucleus accumbens, feed into an ascending frontostriatal pathway to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is ultimately responsible for selecting and executing behavioural responses. Damage to the ACC and OFC leads to a disruption of this circuit resulting in impaired decision-making and impaired response initiation, which presents as apathy. Emergent role concerns also the parietal. We will discuss the importance of these circuits in different pathologies, degenerative or vascular, acute or chronic.Apathy is an uncertain nosographical entity, which includes reduced motivation, abulia, decreased empathy, and lack of emotional involvement; it is an important and heavy-burden clinical condition which strongly impacts in everyday life events, affects the common daily living abilities, reduced the inner goal directed behavior, and gives the heaviest burden on caregivers. Is a quite common comorbidity of many neurological disease, However, there is no definite consensus on the role of apathy in clinical practice, no definite data on anatomical circuits involved in its development, and no definite instrument to detect it at bedside. As a general observation, the occurrence of apathy is connected to damage of prefrontal cortex (PFC) and basal ganglia; "emotional affective" apathy may be related to the orbitomedial PFC and ventral striatum; "cognitive apathy" may be associated with dysfunction of lateral PFC and dorsal caudate nuclei; deficit of "autoactivation" may be due to bilateral lesions of the internal portion of globus pallidus, bilateral paramedian thalamic lesions, or the dorsomedial portion of PFC. On the other hand, apathy severity has been connected to neurofibrillary tangles density in the anterior cingulate gyrus and to gray matter atrophy in the anterior cingulate (ACC) and in the left medial frontal cortex, confirmed by functional imaging studies. These neural networks are linked to projects, judjing and planning, execution and selection common actions, and through the basolateral amygdala and nucleus accumbens projects to the frontostriatal and to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Therefore, an alteration of these circuitry caused a lack of insight, a reduction of decision-making strategies, and a reduced speedness in action decision, major responsible for apathy. Emergent role concerns also the parietal cortex, with its direct action motivation control. We will discuss the importance of these circuits in different pathologies, degenerative or vascular, acute or chronic
Metastatic angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma started from thoracic paravertebral region: a Case report
Full text linkAngioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma (AITL) is one of the most frequent nodal T-cell lymphoma. 1,2 It derives from follicular helper T-cell (TFH).3 It accounts for 15 - 20% of all peripheral T-cell lymphomas and usually affects patients in the seventh decade of life.1,2,4,5 AITL’s incidence is nearly 0,05 new patient case per 100,000 people in US, and there’s no sex predilection.6,7 It is characterized by polymorphic lymph node infiltrate with a prominent proliferation of high endothelial venules and follicular dendritic cells, different immune disorders and a poor prognosis. 8,9 The neoplastic T-cells express CD2, CD3, CD4 and CD10 but the marker’s specificity has been debated. More specific indicators of AITL are CXCL-13, programmed death-1 (PD1), inducible costimulator (ICOS), and BCL6 transcription factor.10-12 Nearly all patients have EBV-infected B cells in their lymph nodes, but the presence of these EBV-positive cells doesn’t correlate with survival.13-15 However, the role of EBV isn’t clear yet: it could be secondary to the immune deregulation, or it could be a fundamental factor involved in disease’s start and progression. AITL is frequently associated with polyclonal B-cell or plasma cell proliferation;8 this neoplastic proliferation of B-cells on parallel with AITL could be motivated by a cluster of pluripotent cells with the ability to differentiate into B-cells and T-cells neoplasm simultaneously, maybe due to exposition to pharmacological therapèies or specific mutagens. Clinical manifestations are often represented by group-B symptoms (fever, night sweats, weight loss), hepatosplenomegaly, anemia, lymphadenopathy, polyclonal hypergammaglobulinemia, thrombocytopenia and/or a large variety of immune disorders.16,17 Up to 50% of develop cutaneous lesions, expression of extranodal diffusion of the tumor: urticaria, purpura, pruritic maculopapular eruptions, erosions, plaques, nodules, petechiae.18-20 Despite occasionally spontaneous remissions,21 AITL prognosis is poor, with a median overall survival of 3 years
Subcortical vascular damages for post radiation brain radiotherapy
Full text linkIn the last decades radiotherapy induced brain injury has become an emerging issue for physicians. Brain RT-induced injury has been classified, according to its time of onset, into acute, early delayed, and late forms. The latter is not reversible. Etiopathogenesys of brain damage after RT has been at length discussed, vascular injury and white matter pathologic changes have been described. In our study we described the neurological cognitive and behavioural disruption produced by radiotherapy in primary brain neoplasia; moreover we demonstrated that the effect of radiation on the brain has a classic time dependent course, with a severity related to total radiation dose, individual fraction size, and the volume of brain irradiated. The patients, who suffered from the consequence of RT, did show slowness of executive functions, and profound alterations of frontal functions, such as attention focusing, mentation control, analogical judgement and insight, not differently from those obtained by the patients suffering from subcortical vascular dementia. The overall result of high dose- RT might be a severely demented, bedridden patient, who “has been cured” for his primary disease, the brain tumour, but it constrains us to make serious consideration before radiation therapy onset and in order to implement new strategies to avoid this damage
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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