Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

After traumatic injury, the brain undergoes a prolonged period of degenerative change that is paradoxically accompanied by cognitive recovery. The spatiotemporal pattern of atrophy and the specific relationships of atrophy to cognitive changes are ill understood. The present study used tensor-based morphometry and neuropsychological testing to examine brain volume loss in 17 traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients and 13 controls over a 4-year period. Patients were scanned at 2 months, 1 year, and 4 years post-injury.

Understanding the genetic and environmental contributions to measures of brain structure such as surface area and cortical thickness is important for a better understanding of the nature of brain-behavior relationships and changes due to development or disease. Continuous spatial maps of genetic influences on these structural features can contribute to our understanding of regional patterns of heritability, since it remains to be seen whether genetic contributions to brain structure respect the boundaries of any traditional parcellation approaches.

BACKGROUND: Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) expansion is common during the first 24 h after onset, but the pattern and pace of hyperacute hemorrhage growth have not been described because serial imaging is typically performed over the course of hours and days, not minutes. The purpose of this study is to elucidate the spatial and temporal characteristics of hyperacute hemorrhage expansion within minutes of ICH onset.

OBJECTIVE: In addition to its role in hemorrhagic stroke, advanced cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is also associated with ischemic lesions and vascular cognitive impairment. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to identify CAA-associated vascular dysfunction.

The amygdala has been repeatedly implicated in emotional processing of both positive and negative-valence stimuli. Previous studies suggest that the amygdala response to emotional stimuli is lower when the subject is in a meditative state of mindful-attention, both in beginner meditators after an 8-week meditation intervention and in expert meditators. However, the longitudinal effects of meditation training on amygdala responses have not been reported when participants are in an ordinary, non-meditative state.

We describe the validation of an anatomical brain atlas approach to the analysis of diffuse optical tomography (DOT). Using MRI data from 32 subjects, we compare the diffuse optical images of simulated cortical activation reconstructed using a registered atlas with those obtained using a subject's true anatomy.

Despite widespread use, the efficacy of epidural corticosteroid injections (ESI) for osteoarthritis-associated neck or radicular pain remains uncertain, so even rare serious complications enter into discussions about use. However, various factors impede investigation and publication of serious adverse events. To that end, we developed new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques for spinal cord white matter quantification and used the best available physiological tests to characterize a cervical spinal cord lesion caused by inadvertent intramedullary injection of Depo-Medrol.

Previous work from our team and others has shown that manual acupuncture at LI4 (hegu), ST36 (zusanli), and LV3 (taichong) deactivates a limbic-paralimbic-neocortical brain network, and at the same time activates somatosensory regions of the brain. The objective of the present study was to explore the specificity and commonality of the brain response to manual acupuncture at LI4, ST36, and LV3, acupoints that are located on different meridians and are used to treat pain disorders.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Ischemic tissue damage is heterogeneous, resulting in complex patterns in the widely used diffusion-weighted MRI. Our study examined the spatiotemporal characteristics of diffusion kurtosis imaging in an animal model of transient middle cerebral artery occlusion.

Surface area of the cerebral cortex is a highly heritable trait, yet little is known about genetic influences on regional cortical differentiation in humans. Using a data-driven, fuzzy clustering technique with magnetic resonance imaging data from 406 twins, we parceled cortical surface area into genetic subdivisions, creating a human brain atlas based solely on genetically informative data.