The impact of molecular biology on clinical neurology.

Advances in molecular biology have increased our understanding of both inherited and sporadic forms of neurological disease. In this review, the impact of these advances is discussed in relation to specific neurological conditions. These include the hereditary neuropathies and ataxias, Huntington's disease, and the muscular dystrophies, as well as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and motor neuron disease. Genetic channelopathies, such as familial hemiplegic migraine, are also described. Although knowledge in this area overall is still relatively scant, current advances in molecular biology have helped in the reclassification of some neurological disorders, thereby providing a further step towards the development of rational therapies to treat these conditions.published_or_final_versio

Update on the management of parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a chronic disabling condition with specific histopathological findings. No cure is yet available although treatment response can be remarkable. Family physicians are often faced with problematic issues on diagnosis and therapy when managing patients with Parkinson's disease. Levodopa is still the mainstay of treatment but its long-term use can be associated with considerable side-effects. We advocate the use of dopamine agonists as de novo therapy in younger onset patients. The application of stereotactic functional surgery has great potential in the treatment of Parkinson's disease.published_or_final_versio

Dehn twists and Lagrangian spherical manifolds

Abstract We study Dehn twists along Lagrangian submanifolds that are finite free quotients of spheres. We describe the induced auto-equivalences to the derived Fukaya category and explain their relations to mirror symmetry.National Science Foundation under agreement No. DMS- 1128155, EPSRC (Establish Career Fellowship EP/N01815X/1), Simons Collaboration Grant 52442

An event-related potential study on the information flow during prospective memory interference

Poster PresentationBACKGROUND: Electroencephalography (EEG) can examine the temporal sequence of brain activity related to a specific event, which is referred to as event-related potential (ERP). Prospective memory (PM) interference presents the interference effect of an embedded PM task on other ongoing task. In the previous functional MRI study, we found that the fusiform gyrus, left inferior parietal lobe and left frontal lobe play an essential role in PM interference effect. However, little temporal information could be retrieved from the functional MRI …published_or_final_versio

Rotational Perturbations of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Type Brane-World Cosmological Models

First order rotational perturbations of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric are considered in the framework of the brane-world cosmological models. A rotation equation, relating the perturbations of the metric tensor to the angular velocity of the matter on the brane is derived under the assumption of slow rotation. The mathematical structure of the rotation equation imposes strong restrictions on the temporal and spatial dependence of the brane matter angular velocity. The study of the integrable cases of the rotation equation leads to three distinct models, which are considered in detail. As a general result we find that, similarly to the general relativistic case, the rotational perturbations decay due to the expansion of the matter on the brane. One of the obtained consistency conditions leads to a particular, purely inflationary brane-world cosmological model, with the cosmological fluid obeying a non-linear barotropic equation of state.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, REVTEX