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J Clin Neurophysiol 2021 Jun 18. Epub 2021 Jun 18.

Clinical Neurophysiology Department, Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital, Santander, Cantabria, Spain; Biomedical Research Institute (IDIVAL), Santander, Cantabria, Spain; and Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

Summary: The entity of triphasic waves (TWs) and TW encephalopathy has derived from the subjective art of EEG interpretation. Indeed, there are few if any guidelines regarding many different aspects of TWs. The authors seek to shed light on the nature and the diagnostic characteristics of various types of TWs, differentiating "typical" from "atypical" forms. Read More

J Alzheimers Dis 2021 Jun 3. Epub 2021 Jun 3.

Brain Connectivity Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience and Neurorehabilitation, IRCCS San Raffaele Pisana, Rome, Italy.

Background: Most common progressive brain diseases in the elderly are Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD). They present with relatively similar clinical symptoms of cognitive decline, but the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms are different.

Objective: The aim is to explore the brain connectivity differences between AD and VaD patients compared to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and normal elderly (Nold) subjects applying graph theory, in particular the Small World (SW) analysis. Read More

Brain Commun 2021 5;3(2):fcaa233. Epub 2021 Jan 5.

Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.

Hashimoto encephalopathy, also known as steroid-responsive encephalopathy associated with autoimmune thyroiditis, has been defined by sub-acute onset encephalopathy, with elevated thyroid antibodies, and immunotherapy responsiveness, in the absence of specific neural autoantibodies. We aimed to retrospectively review 144 cases referred with suspected Hashimoto encephalopathy over a 13-year period, and to determine the clinical utility of thyroid antibodies in the course of evaluation of those patients. One hundred and forty-four patients (all thyroid antibody positive) were included; 72% were women. Read More

Comput Methods Programs Biomed 2021 Jul 16;206:106116. Epub 2021 Apr 16.

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Dicle University, Diyarbakir, Turkey.

Background And Objective: Electroencephalogram (EEG) is one of the most demanded screening tools that investigates the effects of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) on human brain. Identification of AD in early stage gives rise to efficient treatment in dementia. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is considered as a conversion stage. Read More

Alzheimers Dement 2021 Apr 15. Epub 2021 Apr 15.

School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.

The Electrophysiology Professional Interest Area (EPIA) and Global Brain Consortium endorsed recommendations on candidate electroencephalography (EEG) measures for Alzheimer's disease (AD) clinical trials. The Panel reviewed the field literature. As most consistent findings, AD patients with mild cognitive impairment and dementia showed abnormalities in peak frequency, power, and "interrelatedness" at posterior alpha (8-12 Hz) and widespread delta (< 4 Hz) and theta (4-8 Hz) rhythms in relation to disease progression and interventions. Read More

Medicine (Baltimore) 2021 Apr;100(15):e25263

Department of Neurology, Neuroscience Center.

Rationale: Nonconvulsive status epilepticus (NCSE) is a heterogeneous disease with multiple subtypes. NCSE poses great diagnostic and therapeutic challenges due to the lack of typical symptoms. Here, we report a case of NCSE manifesting as rapidly progressive dementia (RPD) and infarction in the splenium of the corpus callosum. Read More

Neurobiol Aging 2021 Jul 10;103:78-97. Epub 2021 Mar 10.

Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales; Neuropsychiatric Institute, The Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, Australia.

Vascular contribution to cognitive impairment (VCI) and dementia is related to etiologies that may affect the neurophysiological mechanisms regulating brain arousal and generating electroencephalographic (EEG) activity. A multidisciplinary expert panel reviewed the clinical literature and reached consensus about the EEG measures consistently found as abnormal in VCI patients with dementia. As compared to cognitively unimpaired individuals, those VCI patients showed (1) smaller amplitude of resting state alpha (8-12 Hz) rhythms dominant in posterior regions; (2) widespread increases in amplitude of delta (< 4 Hz) and theta (4-8 Hz) rhythms; and (3) delayed N200/P300 peak latencies in averaged event-related potentials, especially during the detection of auditory rare target stimuli requiring participants' responses in "oddball" paradigms. Read More

J Alzheimers Dis 2021 ;81(3):933-941

Clinical Research Center for Brain Sciences, Herzog Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel.

There is an urgent need in advanced dementia for evidence-based clinical prognostic predictors that could positively influence ethical decisions allowing health provider and family preparation for early mortality. Accordingly, the authors review and discuss the prognostic utility of clinical assessments and objective measures of pathological brain states in advanced dementia patients associated with accelerated mortality. Overall, due to the paucity of brain-activity and clinical-comorbidity predictors of survival in advanced dementia, authors outline the potential prognostic value of brain-state electroencephalography (EEG) measures and reliable clinical indicators for forecasting early mortality in advanced dementia patients. Read More

J Clin Neurosci 2021 Apr 16;86:247-251. Epub 2021 Feb 16.

Department of Neurology, Rabin Medical Center, Beilinson Campus, Petach Tikva, Israel; Cognitive Neurology Clinic, Rabin Medical Center, Beilinson Campus, Petach Tikva, Israel; Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Recent epidemiological studies suggest late life onset epilepsy of unknown etiology (LOEU) is a risk factor for future dementia. These studies rely on inclusion and exclusion of multiple diagnostic codes rather than structured data and neuroimaging findings, and thus challenging to interpret clinically. We assessed the cumulative incidence of dementia in patients with LOEU diagnosed through admission data and neuroimaging over a 10-year follow-up and compared baseline characteristics that distinguish group level incident dementia. Read More

Brain Connect 2021 May 17. Epub 2021 May 17.

Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.

Recurrent complex visual hallucinations (VHs) are common in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Previous investigations suggest that VHs are associated with connectivity changes within and between large scale networks involved in visual processing and attention. To examine more directly whether VH in DLB reflects direct changes in neuronal activity between cortical regions assessing metabolic connectivity with F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance and graph theory. Read More

J Alzheimers Dis 2021 ;81(1):75-81

Neurology Clinic, IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, Genoa, Italy.

Acute delirium and other neuropsychiatric symptoms have frequently been reported in COVID-19 patients and are variably referred to as acute encephalopathy, COVID-19 encephalopathy, SARS-CoV-2 encephalitis, or steroid-responsive encephalitis. COVID-19 specific biomarkers of cognitive impairment are currently lacking, but there is some evidence that SARS-CoV-2 could preferentially and directly target the frontal lobes, as suggested by behavioral and dysexecutive symptoms, fronto-temporal hypoperfusion on MRI, EEG slowing in frontal regions, and frontal hypometabolism on 18F-FDG-PET imaging. We suggest that an inflammatory parainfectious process targeting preferentially the frontal lobes (and/or frontal networks) could be the underlying cause of these shared clinical, neurophysiological, and imaging findings in COVID-19 patients. Read More

Clin Interv Aging 2021 24;16:345-361. Epub 2021 Feb 24.

Clinical Research Centre, Surrey Memorial Hospital, Fraser Health Authority, Surrey, BC, Canada.

Contextual processing (or context processing; CP) is an integral component of cognition. CP allows people to manage their thoughts and actions by adjusting to surroundings. CP involves the formation of an internal representation of context in relation to the environment, maintenance of this information over a period of time, and the updating of mental representations to reflect changes in the environment. Read More

Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd 2021 02 25;165. Epub 2021 Feb 25.

Amsterdam UMC, locatie AMC, afd. Public andOccupational Health, Amsterdam.

Objective: To determine variation in diagnostic strategies for diagnosing dementia between Dutch hospitals.

Design: Descriptive, retrospective research based on claim data of Dutch health insurers.

Method: Information on the use of diagnostic ancillary services carried out from 2015 to 2018 was collected via national-level insurance claims for patients who received a (new) diagnose-coding for dementia in 2018. Read More

Alzheimers Res Ther 2021 02 26;13(1):53. Epub 2021 Feb 26.

Alzheimer Center Amsterdam, Department of Neurology, Amsterdam Neuroscience, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Background: The DEmEntia with LEwy bOdies Project (DEvELOP) aims to phenotype patients with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and study the symptoms and biomarkers over time. Here, we describe the design and baseline results of DEvELOP. We investigated the associations between core and suggestive DLB symptoms and different aspects of disease burden, i. Read More

Chin Med J (Engl) 2021 Feb 23;134(6):662-664. Epub 2021 Feb 23.

Department of Neurology, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan 610072, China.

Lancet Neurol 2021 03;20(3):235-246

National Reference Center for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany; German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Göttingen, Germany.

Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a fatal neurodegenerative disease caused by misfolded prion proteins (PrP). Effective therapeutics are currently not available and accurate diagnosis can be challenging. Clinical diagnostic criteria use a combination of characteristic neuropsychiatric symptoms, CSF proteins 14-3-3, MRI, and EEG. Read More

JAMA Netw Open 2021 02 1;4(2):e2037349. Epub 2021 Feb 1.

Department of Kinesiology, Michigan State University, East Lansing.

Importance: An objective, reliable indicator of the presence and severity of concussive brain injury and of the readiness for the return to activity has the potential to reduce concussion-related disability.

Objective: To validate the classification accuracy of a previously derived, machine learning, multimodal, brain electrical activity-based Concussion Index in an independent cohort of athletes with concussion.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This prospective diagnostic cohort study was conducted at 10 clinical sites (ie, US universities and high schools) between February 4, 2017, and March 20, 2019. Read More

Alzheimers Res Ther 2021 02 8;13(1):39. Epub 2021 Feb 8.

Dementia Research Centre, Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, London, WC1N 3BG, UK.

Background: Current tasks measuring social cognition are usually 'pen and paper' tasks, have ceiling effects and include complicated test instructions that may be difficult to understand for those with cognitive impairment. We therefore aimed to develop a set of simple, instructionless, quantitative, tasks of emotion recognition using the methodology of eye tracking, with the subsequent aim of assessing their utility in individuals with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD).

Methods: Using the Eyelink 1000 Plus eye tracker, 18 bvFTD and 22 controls completed tasks of simple and complex emotion recognition that involved viewing four images (one target face (simple) or pair of eyes (complex) and the others non-target) followed by a target emotion word and lastly the original four images alongside the emotion word. Read More

J Clin Neurosci 2021 Apr 9;86:301-309. Epub 2021 Jan 9.

Department of Neurology, Monash Medical Centre, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia; School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health, Department of Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Department of Medicine, St. Vincent's Hospital, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Electronic address:

The Heidenhain variant of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (HvCJD) is a relentlessly progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorder characterised by prominent visual features early in its clinical course. However, seizures are uncommonly reported in HvCJD. The case history of a patient admitted to our institution with HvCJD and seizures is described followed by a systematic review of the association between HvCJD and seizures. Read More

Clin Neurol Neurosurg 2021 02 29;201:106446. Epub 2020 Dec 29.

Departments of Biomedical Informatics and Neuroscience, The Ohio State University, 470 Hitchcock Hall, 2070 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43220, USA. Electronic address:

A new EEG-based methodology is presented for differential diagnosis of the Alzheimer's disease (AD), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and healthy subjects employing the discrete wavelet transform (DWT), dispersion entropy index (DEI), a recently-proposed nonlinear measurement, and a fuzzy logic-based classification algorithm. The effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed methodology are evaluated by employing a database of measured EEG data acquired from 135 subjects, 45 MCI, 45 AD and 45 healthy subjects. The proposed methodology differentiates MCI and AD patients from HC subjects with an accuracy of 82. Read More

PLoS One 2020 31;15(12):e0237622. Epub 2020 Dec 31.

Department of Geriatric Medicine, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Study Objectives: While poor sleep quality has been related to increased risk of Alzheimer's disease, long-time shift workers (maritime pilots) did not manifest evidence of early Alzheimer's disease in a recent study. We explored two hypotheses of possible compensatory mechanisms for sleep disruption: Increased efficiency in generating deep sleep during workweeks (model 1) and rebound sleep during rest weeks (model 2).

Methods: We used data from ten male maritime pilots (mean age: 51. Read More

Sensors (Basel) 2020 Dec 16;20(24). Epub 2020 Dec 16.

Department of Artificial Intelligence, Ajou University, Suwon 16499, Korea.

As the number of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) increases, the effort needed to care for these patients increases as well. At the same time, advances in information and sensor technologies have reduced caring costs, providing a potential pathway for developing healthcare services for AD patients. For instance, if a virtual reality (VR) system can provide emotion-adaptive content, the time that AD patients spend interacting with VR content is expected to be extended, allowing caregivers to focus on other tasks. Read More

Neuropsychologia 2021 01 14;151:107728. Epub 2020 Dec 14.

Aphasia and Neurolinguistics Research Laboratory, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States; Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States; Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States.

Evidence from psycholinguistic research indicates that sentence processing is impaired in Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), and more so in individuals with agrammatic (PPA-G) than logopenic (PPA-L) subtypes. Studies have mostly focused on offline sentence production ability, reporting impaired production of verb morphology (e.g. Read More

PLoS One 2020 15;15(12):e0243535. Epub 2020 Dec 15.

Department of Geriatric Medicine, Ziaeian Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

High-frequency oscillations of the frontal cortex are involved in functions of the brain that fuse processed data from different sensory modules or bind them with elements stored in the memory. These oscillations also provide inhibitory connections to neural circuits that perform lower-level processes. Deficit in the performance of these oscillations has been examined as a marker for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Read More

JCI Insight 2021 01 25;6(2). Epub 2021 Jan 25.

GIGA-Cyclotron Research Centre-In Vivo Imaging and.

BACKGROUNDNeuronal hyperexcitability characterizes the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). In animals, early misfolded tau and amyloid-β (Aβ) protein accumulation - both central to AD neuropathology - promote cortical excitability and neuronal network dysfunction. In healthy humans, misfolded tau and Aβ aggregates are first detected, respectively, in the brainstem and frontomedial and temporobasal cortices, decades prior to the onset of AD cognitive symptoms. Read More

Aging (Albany NY) 2020 12 7;12(23):24101-24116. Epub 2020 Dec 7.

The Dementia Center, Institute of Brain and Vessels Mihara Memorial Hospital, Isehara 372-0006, Gunma, Japan.

Dementia is a progressive cognitive syndrome, with few effective pharmacological treatments that can slow its progress. Hence, non-pharmacological treatments (NPTs) play an important role in improving patient symptoms and quality of life. Designing the optimal personalised NPT strategy relies on objectively and quantitatively predicting the treatment outcome. Read More

Front Public Health 2020 3;8:584387. Epub 2020 Nov 3.

Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.

Classification of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) has been becoming a hot issue along with the rapidly increasing number of patients. This task remains tremendously challenging due to the limited data and the difficulties in detecting mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Existing methods use gait [or EEG (electroencephalogram)] data only to tackle this task. Read More

Front Neurol 2020 3;11:584664. Epub 2020 Nov 3.

Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.

Neurodegenerative diseases are a collection of disorders that result in the progressive degeneration and death of neurons. They are clinically heterogenous and can present as deficits in movement, cognition, executive function, memory, visuospatial awareness and language. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation tool that allows for the assessment of cortical function . Read More

Am J Case Rep 2020 Nov 23;21:e927955. Epub 2020 Nov 23.

Department of Neurology, BronxCare Health System, Bronx, NY, USA.

BACKGROUND Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a human prion disease characterized by severe and rapidly progressive fatal neurodegeneration. Currently, there is no cure for CJD, and death from CJD usually occurs within 1 year from the onset of the symptom, and the median survival time is 6 months. CASE REPORT The patient was a 63-year-old woman who presented to the hospital reporting having vertigo for the past 1 week and involuntary muscle contraction resulting in slow repetitive movement and abnormal posture for the past 3 days. Read More

PLoS One 2020 19;15(11):e0242014. Epub 2020 Nov 19.

Department of Electronics and Communication, PDPM Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Jabalpur, India.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a severe incurable neurological disorder. It is mostly characterized by non-motor symptoms like fatigue, dementia, anxiety, speech and communication problems, depression, and so on. Electroencephalography (EEG) play a key role in the detection of the true emotional state of a person. Read More