Oxidative Stress and Mitochondrial Injury in Chronic Multisymptom Conditions: From Gulf War Illness to Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background: Overlapping chronic multisymptom illnesses (CMI) include Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity, and Gulf War illness (GWI), and subsets of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). GWI entails a more circumscribed set of experiences that may provide insights of relevance to overlapping conditions.
Objectives: To consolidate evidence regarding a role for oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction (OSMD), as primary mediators in CMI, using GWI as a departure point.
Methods: Exposure relations, character, timecourse and multiplicity of symptoms, and objective correlates of GWI are compared to expectation for OSMD. Objective correlates of OSMD in GWI and overlapping conditions are examined. 
Discussion: OSMD is an expected consequence of known GWI exposures; is compatible with symptom characteristics observed; and accords with objective markers and health conditions linked to GWI, extending to autoimmune disease and infection. Emergent triangulating evidence directly supports OSMD in multisymptom “overlap” CMI conditions, with similarities to, and diagnosed at elevated rates in, GWI, suggesting a common role in each. 
Conclusions: GWI is compatible with a paradigm by which uncompensated exposure to oxidative/nitrative stressors accompanies and triggers mitochondrial dysfunction, cell energy compromise, and multiple downstream effects such as vulnerability to autoantibodies. This promotes a profile of protean symptoms with variable latency emphasizing but not confined to energy-demanding post-mitotic tissues, according with (and accounting for) known properties of multisystem overlap conditions. This advances understanding of GWI; health conditions attending GWI at elevated rates; and overlap conditions like CFS and ASD, providing prospects for vulnerability assessment, mitigation of progression, treatment, and future prevention – with implications germane to additive and excessive environmental oxidative stressor exposures in the civilian setting.
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Great nature’s second course: Introduction to the special issue on the behavioral neuroscience of sleep

Sleep is necessary for normal psychological functioning, and psychological function in turn affects sleep integrity. Recent investigations delineate the relation of sleep to a broad array of processes ranging from learning and memory to emotional reactivity and mood, and use a variety of methodological approaches (imaging, electrophysiological, behavioral) to reveal the complex relations between sleep and the functioning of the awake brain. The articles in this issue advance our fundamental knowledge of the relation of sleep to psychological function. In addition, several of the articles discuss how sleep is affected by or affects human clinical conditions, including insomnia, epilepsy, mild cognitive impairment, bipolar disorder, and cancer. Together, the articles of this special issue highlight recent progress in understanding the behavioral neuroscience of sleep and identify promising areas for future research, including the possibility of sleep-based interventions to improve psychological health.Accepted manuscrip

Emergence of nonmotor symptoms as the focus of research and treatment of Parkinson's disease: Introduction to the special section on nonmotor dysfunctions in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is traditionally characterized by the cardinal motor symptoms of tremor, rigidity, slowness of movement, and impairments of posture, gait, and balance. A relatively new focus of research and treatment is the nonmotor symptoms of the disease, following from recent understanding of the neuropathological stages. Disruptions of arousal, mood, sleep, and autonomic function before the first motor signs of PD implicate the lower brainstem, which is affected before the substantia nigra and dopaminergic system. In later stages of the disease, the pathology extends to the cortex, accompanied by impairments in cognition and perception. The articles in this special section advance our knowledge of the brain bases of the nonmotor symptoms of PD, including disrupted visual perception, impaired cognition across a range of domains, and psychiatric and artistic manifestations. Subtypes under investigation include those described by side of disease onset (left or right body side), predominant cognitive profile, and gender. Taken together, the articles in this special section reflect the field's growing focus on the nonmotor symptoms of PD, their brain bases, and the corresponding potential for their treatment.Published versio

More Charades and Mondegreens

Here is an assortment of my own charades. Children who learn to recite patriotic songs, religious hymns, etc., that they haven\u27t ever read create remarkable mondegreens. Here are some dandies

Plane-wave theory of nondegenerate oscillation in the linear photorefractive passive phase-conjugate mirror

We present a plane-wave theory of nondegenerate oscillation in the linear passive (self-pumped) phase-conjugate mirror (PPCM). The circumstances under which the plane-wave theory permits spontaneous nondegenerate oscillation in this and other PPCM's are discussed

Alexithymia and apathy in Parkinson's disease: neurocognitive correlates

Non-motor symptoms such as neuropsychiatric and cognitive dysfunction have been found to be common in Parkinson’s disease (PD) but the relation between such symptoms is poorly understood. We focused on alexithymia, an impairment of affective and cognitive emotional processing, as there is evidence for its interaction with cognition in other disorders. Twenty-two non-demented PD patients and 22 matched normal control adults (NC) were administered rating scales assessing neuropsychiatric status, including alexithymia, apathy, and depression, and a series of neuropsychological tests. As expected, PD patients showed more alexithymia than NC, and there was a significant association between alexithymia and disease stage. Alexithymia was associated with performance on non-verbally mediated measures of executive and visuospatial function, but not on verbally mediated tasks. By contrast, there was no correlation between cognition and ratings of either depression or apathy. Our findings demonstrate a distinct association of alexithymia with non-verbal cognition in PD, implicating right hemisphere processes, and differentiate between alexithymia and other neuropsychiatric symptoms in regard to PD cognition.Published versio

Self-induced frequency scanning and distributed Bragg reflection in semiconductor lasers with phase-conjugate feedback

A GaAlAs semiconductor laser with feedback from a barium titanate photorefractive ring passive phase-conjugate mirror can be made to perform repeating or nonrepeating frequency scans over a 10-nm range toward either the blue or the red. The direction of scanning and whether the scans repeat may be controlled by adjusting the overlap of the interaction beams in the crystal. This overlap region may be adjusted so that the diode frequency spectrum, originally occupying about 10 longitudinal modes, scans and narrows as the conjugate signal builds up, coming to rest often in one, but sometimes two or three, longitudinal modes as a result of self-generated distributed-feedback effects. We also report similar effects caused by feedback from the total-internal-reflection passive phase-conjugate mirror. The alignment-control mechanism of the ring mirror is, however, not available in this case

Semi-self-pumped phase-conjugate mirrors

We describe semi-self-pumped photorefractive phase-conjugate mirrors based on the unidirectional ring resonator and the double phase-conjugate mirror. Their applicability to thresholding phase conjugation and one-way imaging through distortions is discussed