Electron Microscopic Demonstration of Neural Connections Using Horseradish Peroxidase: A Comparison of the Tetramethylbenzidine Procedure With Seven Other Histochemical Methods

Eight methods for the electron microscopic demonstration of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) labeling have been compared in adjacent series of vibratome sections of mouse lumbar spinal cord. The tracer, a HRP-wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) conjugate, was injected into the gastrocnemius muscle complex. Following retrograde axonal transport to the lumbar motor neurons and transganglionic anterograde transport of the tracer to the dorsal horn, the HRP activity was demonstrated in eight series of adjacent sections of lumbar spinal cord using eight methods. These included procedures using tetramethylbenzidine (TMB), benzidine dihydrochloride (BDHC), o-tolidine, paraphenylenediamine-pyrocatechol (PPD-PC), and 4 methods using 3,3\u27-diaminobenzidine (DAB). All eight methods were able to demonstrate both retrograde labeling of motor neurons and transganglionic anterograde transport into the dorsal horn. However, there were differences in the appearance of the various reaction products under the electron microscope. In addition, differences in the distribution of the reaction products were observed by both light and electron microscopy. The largest distribution of reaction product was observed with TMB. BDHC and o-tolidine were next, followed by the DAB procedures and PPD-PC. The TMB, BDHC, and o-tolidine reaction products were all found to be suitable for electron microscopy. The TMB reaction product was electron dense and had a very distinctive crystalloid appearance that made identification of HRP-labeled neuronal profiles easy and unequivocal. Copyright © 1982 by The Histochemical Society, Inc

Right Hemisphere Partial Complex Seizures: Mania, Hallucinations, and Speech Disturbances During Ictal Events

A patient with right hemisphere complex partial seizures exhibited extreme emotional lability resembling mania, neologisms resembling those found in fluent aphasia, and hallucinations during ictal periods. The electroencephalographic and clinical findings in this case suggest that cortical and subcortical structures of the right hemisphere may play a role in mediating the expression of language content. RÉSUMÉ Chez un patient prÉsentant des crises partielles complexes de l'hÉmisphÈre droit, nous avons observÉ pendant les crises une labilitÉÉmotionnelle Évoquant le diagnostic de manie. des nÉologismes ressemblant À ceux de l'aphasie de Wernicke et des hallucinations. Nos constatation EEG et cliniques suggÈrent que les structures corticales et sous-corticales de l'hÉmisphÈre droit peuvent jouer un rÔle dans la mÉdiation de l'expression du contenu linguistique. RESUMEN Un paciente con ataques parciales complejos originados en el hemisferio derecho mostrÓ una labilidad emocional extrema semejante a la mania, neologismos comparables a los que se encuentran en la afasia fluida y alucinaciones durante los perÍodos ictales. Los hallazgos clÍnicos y del EEG en este caso sugieren que estructuras corticales y subcorticales del hemisferio derecho pueden jugar un papel en la funciÓn del contenido del lenguaje expresivo.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66016/1/j.1528-1157.1988.tb05093.x.pd

The Comportmental Learning Disabilities of Early Frontal Lobe Damage

Two adult patients are described who suffered bilateral prefrontal damage early in life and who subsequently came to psychiatric attention because of severely aberrant behaviour. A battery of developmental psychology paradigms (not previously used to assess neurologically impaired individuals) showed that social and moral development of these 2 patients was arrested at an immature stage. In comparison with other types of brain damage which disrupt cognitive development, frontal damage acquired early in life appears to provide the neurological substrate for a special type of learning disability in the realms of insight, foresight, social judgement, empathy, and complex reasoning

Phonological Facilitation of Object Naming in Agrammatic and Logopenic Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA): Evidence for a Phonological Processing Deficit

Naming is a pervasive deficit in primary progressive aphasia. However, the source of such deficits across PPA variants is little understood. In this study, individuals with agrammatic (PPA-G) and logopenic (PPA-L) PPA, along with age-matched controls, performed a picture-word interference task to test for online phonological processing deficits during naming. All groups exhibited phonological facilitation (PF) effects, i.e., speeded picture naming in the presence of phonologically-related words. However, the PPA participants exhibited abnormally large PF effects that also were protracted, compared to the control group. These results suggest that impaired phonological processing may contribute to anomia in PPA-G and PPA-L

Brain Networks for Analyzing Eye Gaze

The eyes convey a wealth of information in social interactions. This information is analyzed by multiple brain networks, which we identified using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Subjects attempted to detect a particular directional cue provided either by gaze changes on an image of a face or by an arrow presented alone or by an arrow superimposed on the face. Another control condition was included in which the eyes moved without providing meaningful directional information. Activation of the superior temporal sulcus accompanied extracting directional information from gaze relative to directional information from an arrow and relative to eye motion without relevant directional information. Such selectivity for gaze processing was not observed in face-responsive fusiform regions. Brain activations were also investigated while subjects viewed the same face but attempted to detect when the eyes gazed directly at them. Most notably, amygdala activation was greater during periods when direct gaze never occurred than during periods when direct gaze occurred on 40% of the trials. In summary, our results suggest that increases in neural processing in the amygdala facilitate the analysis of gaze cues when a person is actively monitoring for emotional gaze events, whereas increases in neural processing in the superior temporal sulcus support the analysis of gaze cues that provide socially meaningful spatial information.Psycholog

Shifts of Effective Connectivity within a Language Network during Rhyming and Spelling

This is the published version, also available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0864-05.2005.We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine task-specific modulations of effective connectivity within a left-hemisphere language network during spelling and rhyming judgments on visually presented words. We identified sites showing task-specific activations for rhyming in the lateral temporal cortex (LTC) and for spelling in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). The inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and fusiform gyrus were engaged by both tasks. Dynamic causal modeling showed that each task preferentially strengthened modulatory influences converging on its task-specific site (LTC for rhyming, IPS for spelling). These remarkably selective and symmetrical findings demonstrate that the nature of the behavioral task dynamically shifts the locus of integration (or convergence) to the network component specialized for that task. Furthermore, they suggest that the role of the task-selective areas is to provide a differential synthesis of incoming information rather than providing differential control signals influencing the activity of other network components. Our findings also showed that switching tasks led to changes in the target area influenced by the IFG, suggesting that the IFG may play a pivotal role in setting the cognitive context for each task. We propose that task-dependent shifts in effective connectivity are likely to be mediated through top-down modulations from the IFG to the task-selective regions in a way that differentially enhances their sensitivity to incoming word-form information

Microstructural damage of the posterior corpus callosum contributes to the clinical severity of neglect

One theory to account for neglect symptoms in patients with right focal damage invokes a release of inhibition of the right parietal cortex over the left parieto-frontal circuits, by disconnection mechanism. This theory is supported by transcranial magnetic stimulation studies showing the existence of asymmetric inhibitory interactions between the left and right posterior parietal cortex, with a right hemispheric advantage. These inhibitory mechanisms are mediated by direct transcallosal projections located in the posterior portions of the corpus callosum. The current study, using diffusion imaging and tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS), aims at assessing, in a data-driven fashion, the contribution of structural disconnection between hemispheres in determining the presence and severity of neglect. Eleven patients with right acute stroke and 11 healthy matched controls underwent MRI at 3T, including diffusion imaging, and T1-weighted volumes. TBSS was modified to account for the presence of the lesion and used to assess the presence and extension of changes in diffusion indices of microscopic white matter integrity in the left hemisphere of patients compared to controls, and to investigate, by correlation analysis, whether this damage might account for the presence and severity of patients' neglect, as assessed by the Behavioural Inattention Test (BIT). None of the patients had any macroscopic abnormality in the left hemisphere; however, 3 cases were discarded due to image artefacts in the MRI data. Conversely, TBSS analysis revealed widespread changes in diffusion indices in most of their left hemisphere tracts, with a predominant involvement of the corpus callosum and its projections on the parietal white matter. A region of association between patients' scores at BIT and brain FA values was found in the posterior part of the corpus callosum. This study strongly supports the hypothesis of a major role of structural disconnection between the right and left parietal cortex in determining 'neglect'

The Influence of Stimulus Deviance on Electrophysiologic and Behavioral Responses to Novel Events

This study investigated the role of stimulus deviance in determining electrophysiologic and behavioral responses to “novelty.” Stimulus deviance was defined in terms of differences either from the immediately preceding context or from long-term experience. Subjects participated in a visual event-related potential (ERP) experiment, in which they controlled the duration of stimulus viewing with a button press, which served as a measure of exploratory behavior. Each of the three experimental conditions included a frequent repetitive background stimulus and infrequent stimuli that deviated from the background stimulus. In one condition, both background and deviant stimuli were simple, easily recognizable geometric figures. In another condition, both background and deviant stimuli were unusual/unfamiliar figures, and in a third condition, the background stimulus was a highly unusual figure, and the deviant stimuli were simple, geometric shapes. Deviant stimuli elicited larger N2-P3 amplitudes and longer viewing durations than the repetitive background stimulus, even when the deviant stimuli were simple, familiar shapes and the background stimulus was a highly unusual figure. Compared to simple, familiar deviant stimuli, unusual deviant stimuli elicited larger N2-P3 amplitudes and longer viewing times. Within subjects, the deviant stimuli that evoked the largest N2-P3 responses also elicited the longest viewing durations. We conclude that deviance from both immediate context and long-term prior experience contribute to the response to novelty, with the combination generating the largest N2-P3 amplitude and the most sustained attention. The amplitude of the N2-P3 may reflect how much “uncertainty” is evoked by a novel visual stimulus and signal the need for further exploration and cognitive processing