Neural processing of criticism and positive comments from relatives in individuals with schizotypal personality traits

Objectives. High negative expressed emotion by family members towards schizophrenia patients increases the risk of subsequent relapse. The study aimed to determine whether individuals with high schizotypy (HS) and low schizotypy (LS) would differ in activation of brain areas involved in cognitive control when listening to relative criticism

Identifying controllable cortical neural markers with machine learning for adaptive deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease

Contains fulltext : 222474.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)The identification of oscillatory neural markers of Parkinson's disease (PD) can contribute not only to the understanding of functional mechanisms of the disorder, but may also serve in adaptive deep brain stimulation (DBS) systems. These systems seek online adaptation of stimulation parameters in closed-loop as a function of neural markers, aiming at improving treatment's efficacy and reducing side effects. Typically, the identification of PD neural markers is based on group-level studies. Due to the heterogeneity of symptoms across patients, however, such group-level neural markers, like the beta band power of the subthalamic nucleus, are not present in every patient or not informative about every patient's motor state. Instead, individual neural markers may be preferable for providing a personalized solution for the adaptation of stimulation parameters. Fortunately, data-driven bottom-up approaches based on machine learning may be utilized. These approaches have been developed and applied successfully in the field of brain-computer interfaces with the goal of providing individuals with means of communication and control. In our contribution, we present results obtained with a novel supervised data-driven identification of neural markers of hand motor performance based on a supervised machine learning model. Data of 16 experimental sessions obtained from seven PD patients undergoing DBS therapy show that the supervised patient-specific neural markers provide improved decoding accuracy of hand motor performance, compared to group-level neural markers reported in the literature. We observed that the individual markers are sensitive to DBS therapy and thus, may represent controllable variables in an adaptive DBS system.15 p

A detailed analysis of anatomical plausibility of crossed and uncrossed streamline rendition of the dentato-rubro-thalamic tract (DRT(T)) in a commercial stereotactic planning system

Background!#!An increasing number of neurosurgeons use display of the dentato-rubro-thalamic tract (DRT) based on diffusion weighted imaging (dMRI) as basis for their routine planning of stimulation or lesioning approaches in stereotactic tremor surgery. An evaluation of the anatomical validity of the display of the DRT with respect to modern stereotactic planning systems and across different tracking environments has not been performed.!##!Methods!#!Distinct dMRI and anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of high and low quality from 9 subjects were used. Six subjects had repeated MRI scans and therefore entered the analysis twice. Standardized DICOM structure templates for volume of interest definition were applied in native space for all investigations. For tracking BrainLab Elements (BrainLab, Munich, Germany), two tensor deterministic tracking (FT2), MRtrix IFOD2 ( https://www.mrtrix.org ), and a global tracking (GT) approach were used to compare the display of the uncrossed (DRTu) and crossed (DRTx) fiber structure after transformation into MNI space. The resulting streamlines were investigated for congruence, reproducibility, anatomical validity, and penetration of anatomical way point structures.!##!Results!#!In general, the DRTu can be depicted with good quality (as judged by waypoints). FT2 (surgical) and GT (neuroscientific) show high congruence. While GT shows partly reproducible results for DRTx, the crossed pathway cannot be reliably reconstructed with the other (iFOD2 and FT2) algorithms.!##!Conclusion!#!Since a direct anatomical comparison is difficult in the individual subjects, we chose a comparison with two research tracking environments as the best possible 'ground truth.' FT2 is useful especially because of its manual editing possibilities of cutting erroneous fibers on the single subject level. An uncertainty of 2 mm as mean displacement of DRTu is expectable and should be respected when using this approach for surgical planning. Tractographic renditions of the DRTx on the single subject level seem to be still illusive