Neural plasticity in common forms of chronic headaches

Headaches are universal experiences and among the most common disorders. While headache may be physiological in the acute setting, it can become a pathological and persistent condition.The mechanisms underlying the transition from episodic to chronic pain have been the subject of intense study. Using physiological and imaging methods, researchers have identified a number of different forms of neural plasticity associated with migraine and other headaches, including peripheral and central sensitization, and alterations in the endogenous mechanisms of pain modulation. While these changes have been proposed to contribute to headache and pain chronification, some findings are likely the results of repetitive noxious stimulation, such as atrophy of brain areas involved in pain perception and modulation. In this review, we provide a narrative overview of recent advances on the neuroimaging, electrophysiological and genetic aspects of neural plasticity associated with the most common forms of chronic headaches, including migraine, cluster headache, tension-type headache, and medication overuse headache

Synchronous Occurrence of Primary Neoplasms in the Uterus with Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Cervix and Adenocarcinoma of the Endometrium

SummaryObjectiveSynchronous primary malignant neoplasms of the uterus are uncommon. Patients with synchronous cervical and endometrial cancers are even rarer. We describe a case of cervical squamous cell carcinoma and endometrial endometrioid adenocarcinoma occurring simultaneously in a 47-year-old woman presenting with massive menstrual bleeding. The concept of synchronous primary malignancies of the genital tract is also reviewed in this report.Case ReportA 47-year-old overtly obese female presented with menometrorrhagia of over 6 months' duration. Pelvic examination detected a large cervix but apparently normal externals. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a mass over the cervical region and endometrial lesions in the uterine cavity. Surgical exploration disclosed a cervical tumor and erosion of the endometrium. The pathologic findings were compatible with synchronous occurrence of primary neoplasms in the uterus with squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix and adenocarcinoma of the endometrium.ConclusionSynchronous genital tract neoplasms are rare but cause more clinical problems than a single neoplasm. It is practical to pay more attention to the differential diagnosis of primary and metastatic tumors. The second primary cancer that occurs in an individual with endometrial cancer may offer an opportunity for early detection. The prognosis for a patient with synchronous gynecologic malignancies does not seem to be worse

Glutamatergic Dysfunction and Glutamatergic Compounds for Major Psychiatric Disorders: Evidence From Clinical Neuroimaging Studies

Excessive glutamate release has been linked to stress and many neurodegenerative diseases. Evidence indicates abnormalities of glutamatergic neurotransmission or glutamatergic dysfunction as playing an important role in the development of many major psychiatric disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder). Recently, ketamine, an N-methyl-d-aspartate antagonist, has been demonstrated to have promisingly rapid antidepressant efficacy for treatment-resistant depression. Many compounds that target the glutamate system have also become available that possess potential in the treatment of major psychiatric disorders. In this review, we update evidence from recent human studies that directly or indirectly measured glutamatergic neurotransmission and function in major psychiatric disorders using modalities such as magnetic resonance spectroscopy, positron emission tomography/single-photon emission computed tomography, and paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation. The newer generation of antidepressants that target the glutamatergic system developed in human clinical studies is also reviewed

Regulation of axon repulsion by MAX-1 SUMOylation and AP-3.

During neural development, growing axons express specific surface receptors in response to various environmental guidance cues. These axon guidance receptors are regulated through intracellular trafficking and degradation to enable navigating axons to reach their targets. In Caenorhabditis elegans, the UNC-5 receptor is necessary for dorsal migration of developing motor axons. We previously found that MAX-1 is required for UNC-5-mediated axon repulsion, but its mechanism of action remained unclear. Here, we demonstrate that UNC-5-mediated axon repulsion in C. elegans motor axons requires both max-1 SUMOylation and the AP-3 complex β subunit gene, apb-3 Genetic interaction studies show that max-1 is SUMOylated by gei-17/PIAS1 and acts upstream of apb-3 Biochemical analysis suggests that constitutive interaction of MAX-1 and UNC-5 receptor is weakened by MAX-1 SUMOylation and by the presence of APB-3, a competitive interactor with UNC-5. Overexpression of APB-3 reroutes the trafficking of UNC-5 receptor into the lysosome for protein degradation. In vivo fluorescence recovery after photobleaching experiments shows that MAX-1 SUMOylation and APB-3 are required for proper trafficking of UNC-5 receptor in the axon. Our results demonstrate that SUMOylation of MAX-1 plays an important role in regulating AP-3-mediated trafficking and degradation of UNC-5 receptors during axon guidance

Merged Search Algorithms for Radio Frequency Identification Anticollision

Nowadays, the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system enables the control of many devices over an open communication infrastructure ranging from a small home area network to the global Internet. Moreover, a variety of consumer products are tagged with remotely low-cost readable identification electromagnetic tags to replace Bar Codes. Applications such as automatic object tracking, inventory and supply chain management, and Web appliances were adopted for years in many companies. The arbitration algorithm for RFID system is used to arbitrate all the tags to avoid the collision problem with the existence of multiple tags in the interrogation field of a transponder. A splitting algorithm which is called Binary Search Tree (BST) is well known for multitags arbitration. In the current study, a splitting-based schema called Merged Search Tree is proposed to capture identification codes correctly for anticollision. Performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with the original BST according to time and power consumed during the arbitration process. The results show that the proposed model can reduce searching time and power consumed to achieve a better performance arbitration

Counteracting Phishing Page Polymorphism: An Image Layout Analysis Approach

Abstract. Many visual similarity-based phishing page detectors have been developed to detect phishing webpages, however, scammers now cre-ate polymorphic phishing pages to breach the defense of those detectors. We call this kind of countermeasure phishing page polymorphism. Poly-morphic pages are visually similar to genuine pages they try to mimic, but they use different representation techniques. It increases the level of difficulty to detect phishing pages. In this paper, we propose an effective detection mechanism to detect polymorphic phishing pages. In contrast to existing approaches, we analyze the layout of webpages rather than the HTML codes, colors, or content. Specifically, we compute the sim-ilarity degree of a suspect page and an authentic page through image processing techniques. Then, the degrees of similarity are ranked by a classifier trained to detect phishing pages. To verify the efficacy of our phishing detection mechanism, we collected 6, 750 phishing pages and 312 mimicked targets for the performance evaluation. The results show that our method achieves an excellent detection rate of 99.6%.

Causal Evidence for the Role of Specific GABAergic Interneuron Types in Entorhinal Recruitment of Dentate Granule Cells

The dentate gyrus (DG) is the primary gate of the hippocampus and controls information flow from the cortex to the hippocampus proper. To maintain normal function, granule cells (GCs), the principal neurons in the DG, receive fine- tuned inhibition from local-circuit GABAergic inhibitory interneurons (INs). Abnormalities of GABAergic circuits in the DG are associated with several brain disorders, including epilepsy, autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer disease. Therefore, understanding the network mechanisms of inhibitory control of GCs is of functional and pathophysiological importance. GABAergic inhibitory INs are heterogeneous, but it is unclear how individual subtypes contribute to GC activity. Using cell-type-specific optogenetic perturbation, we investigated whether and how two major IN populations defined by parvalbumin (PV) and somatostatin (SST) expression, regulate GC input transformations. We showed that PV-expressing (PV+) INs, and not SST- expressing (SST+) INs, primarily suppress GC responses to single cortical stimulation. In addition, these two IN classes differentially regulate GC responses to θ and γ frequency inputs from the cortex. Notably, PV+ INs specifically control the onset of the spike series, whereas SST+ INs preferentially regulate the later spikes in the series. Together, PV+ and SST+ GABAergic INs engage differentially in GC input-output transformations in response to various activity patterns