Search

After more than 30 years of extensive investigation, impressive progress has been made in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). However, the functional role of spatiotemporally distinct consciousness-related neural activity in conscious perception is debated. An influential framework proposed that consciousness-related neural activities could be dissociated into two distinct processes: phenomenal and access consciousness. However, though hotly debated, its authenticity has not been examined in a single paradigm with more informative intracranial recordings. In the present study, we employed a visual awareness task and recorded the local field potential (LFP) of patients with electrodes implanted in cortical and subcortical regions. Overall, we found that the latency of visual awareness-related activity exhibited a bimodal distribution, and the recording sites with short and long latencies were largely separated in location, except in the lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC). The mixture of short and long latencies in the lPFC indicates that it plays a critical role in linking phenomenal and access consciousness. However, the division between the two is not as simple as the central sulcus, as proposed previously. Moreover, in 4 patients with electrodes implanted in the bilateral prefrontal cortex, early awareness-related activity was confined to the contralateral side, while late awareness-related activity appeared on both sides. Finally, Granger causality analysis showed that awareness-related information flowed from the early sites to the late sites. These results provide the first LFP evidence of neural correlates of phenomenal and access consciousness, which sheds light on the spatiotemporal dynamics of NCC in the human brain., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: In recent years, the development of robotic neurosurgery has brought many benefits to patients, but there are few studies on the occurrence of surgical site infection (SSI) after robot-assisted stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG). The purpose of this study was to collect relevant data from robot-assisted SEEG over the past ten years and to analyze the influencing factors and economic burden of surgical site infection., Methods: Basic and surgical information was collected for all patients who underwent robot-assisted SEEG from January 2014 to December 2023. Logistic regression was used to analyze the factors influencing SSI according to different subgroups (radiofrequency thermocoagulation or epilepsy resection surgery)., Results: A total of 242 subjects were included in this study. The risk of SSI in the epilepsy resection surgery group (18.1%) was 3.5 times greater than that in the radiofrequency thermocoagulation group (5.1%) (OR 3.49, 95% CI 1.39 to 9.05); this difference was statistically significant. SSI rates in the epilepsy resection surgery group were associated with shorter surgical intervals (≤ 9 days) and higher BMI (≥ 23 kg/m 2 ) (6.1 and 5.2 times greater than those in the control group, respectively). Hypertension and admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) were risk factors for SSI in the radiofrequency thermocoagulation group. Patients with SSIs had $21,231 more total hospital costs, a 7-day longer hospital stay, and an 8-day longer postoperative hospital stay than patients without SSI., Conclusions: The incidence of SSI in patients undergoing epilepsy resection after stereoelectroencephalography was higher than that in patients undergoing radiofrequency thermocoagulation. For patients undergoing epilepsy resection surgery, prolonging the interval between stereoelectroencephalography and epilepsy resection surgery can reduce the risk of SSI; At the same time, for patients receiving radiofrequency thermocoagulation treatment, it is not recommended to enter the ICU for short-term observation if the condition permits., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a promising therapy for refractory Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS). However, its long-term efficacy, safety, and recommended surgical age remain controversial, requiring evidence to compare different age categories., Methods: This retrospective cohort study recruited 102 GTS patients who underwent DBS between October 2006 and April 2022 at two national centers. Patients were divided into two age categories: children (aged < 18 years; n = 34) and adults (aged ≥ 18 years; n = 68). The longitudinal outcomes as tic symptoms were assessed by the YGTSS, and the YBOCS, BDI, and GTS-QOL were evaluated for symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, and quality of life, respectively., Results: Overall, these included patients who finished a median 60-month follow-up, with no significant difference between children and adults (p = 0.44). Overall, the YGTSS total score showed significant postoperative improvements and further improved with time (improved 45.2%, 51.6%, 55.5%, 55.6%, 57.8%, 61.4% after 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, and ≥ 60 months of follow-up compared to baseline, respectively) in all included patients (all p < 0.05). A significantly higher improvement was revealed in children than adults at ≥ 60 months of follow-up in the YGTSS scores (70.1% vs 55.9%, p = 0.043), and the time to achieve 60% improvement was significantly shorter in the children group (median 6 months vs 12 months, p = 0.013). At the last follow-up, the mean improvements were 45.4%, 48.9%, and 55.9% and 40.3%, 45.4%, and 47.9% in YBOCS, BDI, and GTS-QOL scores for children and adults, respectively, which all significantly improved compared to baseline (all p < 0.05) but without significant differences between these two groups (all p > 0.05), and the children group received significantly higher improvement in GTS-QOL scores than adults (55.9% vs. 47.9%, p = 0.049)., Conclusions: DBS showed acceptable long-term efficacy and safety for both children and adults with GTS. Surgeries performed for patients younger than 18 years seemed to show acceptable long-term efficacy and safety and were not associated with increased risks of loss of benefit compared to patients older than 18 at the time of surgery. However, surgeries for children should also be performed cautiously to ensure their refractoriness and safety., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Pa0665 in Pseudomonas aeruginosa shares homologous sequences with that of the essential A-type iron-sulfur (Fe-S) cluster insertion protein ErpA in Escherichia coli . However, its essentiality in P. aeruginosa and its complementation with E. coli erpA has not been experimentally examined. To fulfill this task, we constructed plasmid-based ts -mutant Δpa0665 / pTS-pa0665 using a three-step protocol. The mutant displayed growth defects at 42 °C, which were complemented by expressing ec.erpA . Microscopic observations indicated a petite cell phenotype for Δpa0665 / pTS-pa0665 at 42 °C, correlated with the downregulation of the oprG gene. RNA sequencing revealed significant transcriptional changes in genes associated with the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system, aligning with reduced ATP levels in Δpa0665 / pTS-pa0665 under 42 °C. Additionally, the ts -mutant showed heightened sensitivity to H 2 O 2 at 42 °C. Overall, our study demonstrates the essential role of pa0665 for OXPHOS function and is complemented by ec.erpA . We propose that the plasmid-based ts -allele is useful for genetic analysis of essential genes of interest in P. aeruginosa .

Acupuncture, a traditional Chinese therapy, is gaining attention for its impact on the brain. While existing electroencephalogram and functional magnetic resonance image research has made significant contributions, this paper utilizes stereo-electroencephalography data for a comprehensive exploration of neurophysiological effects. Employing a multi-scale approach, channel-level analysis reveals notable $\delta $-band activity changes during acupuncture. At the brain region level, acupuncture modulated connectivity between the paracentral lobule and the precentral gyrus. Whole-brain analysis indicates acupuncture's influence on network organization, and enhancing $E&#95;{glob}$ and increased interaction between the motor and sensory cortex. Brain functional reorganization is an important basis for functional recovery or compensation after central nervous system injury. The use of acupuncture to stimulate peripheral nerve trunks, muscle motor points, acupoints, etc., in clinical practice may contribute to the reorganization of brain function. This multi-scale perspective provides diverse insights into acupuncture's effects. Remarkably, this paper pioneers the introduction of stereo-electroencephalography data, advancing our understanding of acupuncture's mechanisms and potential therapeutic benefits in clinical settings., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permission@oup.com.)

Exploring the neural mechanisms of awareness is a fundamental task of cognitive neuroscience. There is an ongoing dispute regarding the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the emergence of awareness, which is partially raised by the confound between report- and awareness-related activity. To address this problem, we designed a visual awareness task that can minimize report-related motor confounding. Our results show that saccadic latency is significantly shorter in the aware trials than in the unaware trials. Local field potential (LFP) data from six patients consistently show early (200-300ms) awareness-related activity in the PFC, including event-related potential and high-gamma activity. Moreover, the awareness state can be reliably decoded by the neural activity in the PFC since the early stage, and the neural pattern is dynamically changed rather than being stable during the representation of awareness. Furthermore, the enhancement of dynamic functional connectivity, through the phase modulation at low frequency, between the PFC and other brain regions in the early stage of the awareness trials may explain the mechanism of conscious access. These results indicate that the PFC is critically involved in the emergence of awareness., Competing Interests: ZF, YD, ZL, YH, HZ, XX, MZ No competing interests declared, (© 2023, Fang et al.)

The integration of stereoelectroencephalography with therapeutic deep brain stimulation (DBS) holds immense promise as a viable approach for precise treatment of refractory disorders, yet it has not been explored in the domain of headache or pain management. Here, we implanted 14 electrodes in a patient with refractory migraine and integrated clinical assessment and electrophysiological data to investigate personalized targets for refractory headache treatment. Using statistical analyses and cross-validated machine-learning models, we identified high-frequency oscillations in the right nucleus accumbens as a critical headache-related biomarker. Through a systematic bipolar stimulation approach and blinded sham-controlled survey, combined with real-time electrophysiological data, we successfully identified the left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex as the optimal target for the best potential treatment. In this pilot study, the concept of the herein-proposed data-driven approach to optimizing precise and personalized treatment strategies for DBS may create a new frontier in the field of refractory headache and even pain disorders., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024 The Authors.)

Objective: Adult cerebral X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ACALD) with initial frontal lobe involvement is a rare genetic disease that is easily misdiagnosed and underdiagnosed. We sought to improve the early identification of such diseases., Methods: We present three cases of adult X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) with initial frontal lobe involvement and identify an additional 13 cases from the database. The clinical and imaging characteristics of the overall sixteen cases were analyzed., Results: The average age of onset was 37 years, with 15 male and 1 female patient. A total of 12 patients (75%) developed a decline in cerebral executive and cognitive functions. Brain trauma is the possible trigger for the onset of ALD in five patients (31%). An elevated level of very-long-chain fatty acids (VLCFA) was observed in all 15 patients on whom a plasma VLCFA was performed.10 patients with gene tests showed different mutation sites in the ABCD1 gene. Brain MRI of six patients (46%) were characterized by frontal lobe "butterfly wings"-like lesions with peripheral rim enhancement. Four patients underwent brain biopsies (patients 1, 3, 15, and 13), and five patients (31%) were initially misdiagnosed (patients 1, 2, 3, 11, and 15). Nine of the patients with follow-up records experienced poor prognoses, and five of them, unfortunately, died (56%)., Conclusion: ACALD patients with anterior patterns tend to be misdiagnosed. The early clinical manifestation is a decline in cerebral executive and cognitive function. Brain trauma may be a trigger for this pattern. Brain MRI findings are characterized by frontal lobe "butterfly wing"-like lesions with peripheral rim enhancement. The determination of the VLCFA levels and the genetic detection of the causative mutations are required to confirm the diagnosis., (© 2023. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Belgian Neurological Society.)

Purpose: The ophthalmic artery is often involved in suprasellar and parasellar surgeries, but the anatomical structure where the ophthalmic artery originates has not been fully clarified from the perspective of an endoscopic endonasal approach (EEA)., Methods: A total of 10 fresh cadaveric heads (20 sides) were dissected through an EEA, and the origin of the bilateral ophthalmic arteries and their adjacent structures were observed from a ventral view. The origin of the ophthalmic artery in 50 healthy people was retrospectively studied on computed tomography angiography imaging., Results: The ophthalmic artery originated from the intradural segment (75%), paraclinoid segment (15%), or parasellar segment (10%) of the internal carotid artery. The cross-sectional view of the internal carotid artery through the EEA showed that the ophthalmic artery originated from the middle 1/3 (75%) or medial 1/3 (25%) of the upper surface of the internal carotid artery. On computed tomography angiography, the ophthalmic artery originated from the middle 1/3 (77%) and medial 1/3 (22%) of the upper surface of the internal carotid artery. All ophthalmic arteries were near the level of the distal dural ring (DDR) of the internal carotid artery, that is, within 3 mm above or below the DDR., Conclusions: The ophthalmic artery usually originates in the middle 1/3 of the upper surface of the intradural segment of the internal carotid artery within 3 mm of the DDR. The ophthalmic artery can be protected to the utmost extent after its origin is identified through an EEA., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is a newly developed medical imaging modality, which combines the advantages of pure optical imaging and ultrasound imaging, owning both high optical contrast and deep penetration depth. Very recently, PAT is studied in human brain imaging. Nevertheless, while ultrasound waves are passing through the human skull tissues, the strong acoustic attenuation and aberration will happen, which causes photoacoustic signals' distortion. In this work, we use 180 T1 weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) human brain volumes along with the corresponding magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) brain volumes, and segment them to generate the 2D human brain numerical phantoms for PAT. The numerical phantoms contain six kinds of tissues, which are scalp, skull, white matter, gray matter, blood vessel and cerebrospinal fluid. For every numerical phantom, Monte-Carlo based optical simulation is deployed to obtain the photoacoustic initial pressure based on optical properties of human brain. Then, two different k-wave models are used for the skull-involved acoustic simulation, which are fluid media model and viscoelastic media model. The former one only considers longitudinal wave propagation, and the latter model takes shear wave into consideration. Then, the PA sinograms with skull-induced aberration is taken as the input of U-net, and the skull-stripped ones are regarded as the supervision of U-net to train the network. Experimental result shows that the skull's acoustic aberration can be effectively alleviated after U-net correction, achieving conspicuous improvement in quality of PAT human brain images reconstructed from the corrected PA signals, which can clearly show the cerebral artery distribution inside the human skull., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (© 2023 The Authors.)

The long non-coding RNA antisense 1 ADAMTS9-AS1 has been reported to serve as an oncogene or tumor suppressor in several tumors, including colorectal cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma. Nevertheless, the clinical significance and biological behaviors of ADAMTS9-AS1 in glioma still remain unclear. Therefore, the goal of this study was to evaluate the functional roles and potential mechanisms of ADAMTS9-AS1 in glioma cells. Using quantitative real-time PCR analysis, we found that ADAMTS9-AS1 was upregulated in glioma tissues and cells in comparison to corresponding controls. ADAMTS9-AS1 expression level was correlated to tumor size (p=0.005) and WHO grade (p=0.002). Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox multivariate analysis showed that ADAMTS9-AS1 could serve as an independent prognostic factor affecting the overall survival of glioma patients. Functionally, depletion of ADAMTS9-AS1 significantly suppressed the proliferation, migration and invasion in glioma cell lines (U251 and U87), as shown via CCK-8 assay, Edu corporation assay, wound healing assay and transwell assay. Furthermore, we demonstrated that knockdown of ADAMTS9-AS1 suppressed Wnt1, β-catenin, c-myc and PCNA, while upregulating E-cadherin expression. In conclusion, our data revealed that ADAMTS9-AS1 confers oncogenic function in the progression of glioma, thus targeting ADAMTS9-AS1 might be a promising therapeutic strategy for this disease.

Aldo-keto reductase family 1 member B1 (AKR1B1) plays a vital role in tumor development and is involved in the tumor immune process. However, its role in glioma cell is poorly studied. This study's aim was to assess the role of AKR1B1 in glioma through bioinformatics analysis. The AKR1B1 expression data and corresponding clinical data of glioma were collected from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The R packages were used for data integration, extraction, analysis, and visualization. According to the median value of the risk score, all patients were divided into high-risk and low-risk groups to draw the Kaplan-Meier (KM) survival curves and to explore the level of immune infiltration. The expression of AKR1B1 was significantly elevated in glioma tissues compared to normal tissues ( P  < 0.001). The high expression of AKR1B1 was significantly associated with WHO grade ( P  < 0.001), IDH status ( P  < 0.001), 1p/19q codeletion ( P  < 0.001), primary therapy outcome ( P  = 0.004), and age ( P  < 0.05). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis found that OS (HR = 3.75, P  < 0.001), DSS (HR = 3.85, P  < 0.001), and PFI (HR = 2.76, P  < 0.001) were lower in patients with glioma with high AKR1B1 expression than in the group with low AKR1B1 expression. Based on GESA, six pathways (including interferon gamma signaling, signaling by interleukins, cell cycle checkpoints, cytokine receptor interaction, cell adhesion molecules (CAMs), and cell surface interactions) at the vascular wall were identified as significantly different between the two groups. Moreover, highly expressed AKR1B1 was associated with immune cell infiltration. AKR1B1 plays a key role in glioma progression and prognosis and, therefore, serves as a potential biomarker for prediction of patients' survival., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Hulin Zhao et al.)

Purpose: Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) is a malformation of cortical development that often causes pharmacologically intractable epilepsy. However, FCD lesions are frequently characterized by minor structural abnormalities that can easily go unrecognized, making diagnosis difficult. Therefore, many epileptic patients have had pathologically confirmed FCD lesions that appeared normal in pre-surgical fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) magnetic resonance (MR) studies. Such lesions are called "FLAIR-negative." This study aimed to improve the detection of histopathologically verified FCD in a sample of patients without visually appreciable lesions., Methods: The technique first extracts a series of features from a FLAIR image. Then, three naive Bayesian classifiers with probability (NBCP) are trained based on different numbers of feature maps to classify voxels as lesional or healthy voxels and assign the lesions a probability of correct classification. This method classifies the three-dimensional (3D) images of all patients using leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV). Finally, the 3D lesion probability map, including epileptogenic lesions, is obtained by removing false-positive voxel outliers using the morphological method. The performance of the NBCP was assessed for quantitative analysis by specificity, accuracy, recall, precision, and Dice coefficient in subject-wise, lesion-wise, and voxel-wise manners., Results: The best detection results were obtained by using four features: cortical thickness, symmetry, K-means, and modified texture energy. There were eight lesions in seven patients. The subject-wise sensitivity of the proposed method was 85.71% (6/7). Seven out of eight lesions were detected, so the lesion-wise sensitivity was 87.50% (7/8). No significant differences in effectiveness were found between automated lesion detection using four features and lesion detection using manual segmentation, as voxels were quantitatively analyzed in terms of specificity (mean ± SD = 99.64 ± 0.13), accuracy (mean ± SD = 99.62 ± 0.14), recall (mean ± SD = 73.27 ± 26.11), precision (mean ± SD = 11.93 ± 8.16), and Dice coefficient (mean ± SD = 22.82 ± 15.57)., Conclusion: We developed a novel automatic voxel-based method to improve the detection of FCD FLAIR-negative lesions. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to detect FCD lesions that appear normal in pre-surgical 3D high-resolution FLAIR images alone with a limited number of radiomics features. We optimized the algorithm and selected the best prior probability to improve the detection. For non-temporal lobe epilepsy (non-TLE) patients, lesions could be accurately located, although there were still false-positive areas., (© 2020 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.)

Blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI) is a leading cause of disability and mortality in soldiers during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although substantial clinical and animal studies have investigated the pathophysiology and treatments of bTBI, few effective therapies have been found, especially for the early rescue in the battlefield. The aim of this study is to evaluate neuroprotective effects of early normobaric hyperoxia (NBO) on bTBI. We established a rat model of bTBI caused by explosion in the cabin. It exhibited typical changes of mild bTBI, like impaired neurological function, brain edema, minor intracranial hemorrhage and neuron necrosis. The rats were divided into 4 groups (n = 12): Sham, Vehicle, hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) and NBO. Neurological function of the rats was assessed by the Neurological Severity Scores (NSS) at 24 h and 72 h after explosion. Serum interleukin-6 (IL-6), neuron specific enolase (NSE) and tau protein were measured at 24 h and 72 h after explosion. Brain water content was measured and Aquaporin-4 (AQP4) immunostaining was performed. Neuronal apoptosis was analyzed by TUNEL staining. NBO demonstrated curative effects on protecting the neurological function. Serum levels of NSE and tau protein were reduced at 24 h and 72 h after explosion. But the levels of IL-6 were not reduced significantly at both time points. Cerebral edema was alleviated. Simultaneously, AQP4 immunostaining of the hippocampus showed remarkably decreased expression after treatment. The number of apoptotic cells in hippocampus was also decreased. Compared with HBO, NBO is simple and convenient, and can be administered in remote areas. It may be a promising therapy for early rescue of bTBI in the battlefield.

Purpose: Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) is a common cause of epilepsy; the only treatment is surgery. Therefore, detecting FCD using noninvasive imaging technology can help doctors determine whether surgical intervention is required. Since FCD lesions are small and not obvious, diagnosing FCD through visual evaluations of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans is difficult. The purpose of this study is to detect and segment histologically confirmed FCD lesions in images of normal fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR)-negative lesions using convolutional neural network (CNN) technology., Methods: The technique involves training a six-layer CNN named Net-Pos, which consists of two convolutional layers (CLs); two pooling layers (PLs); and two fully connected (FC) layers, including 60 943 learning parameters. We employed activation maximization (AM) to optimize a series of pattern image blocks (PIBs) that were most similar to a lesion image block by using the trained Net-Pos. We developed an AM and convolutional localization (AMCL) algorithm that employs the mean PIBs combined with convolution to locate and segment FCD lesions in FLAIR-negative patients. Five evaluation indices, namely, recall, specificity, accuracy, precision, and the Dice coefficient, were applied to evaluate the localization and segmentation performance of the algorithm., Results: The PIBs most similar to an FCD lesion image block were identified by the trained Net-Pos as image blocks with brighter central areas and darker surrounding image blocks. The technique was evaluated using 18 FLAIR-negative lesion images from 12 patients. The subject-wise recall of the AMCL algorithm was 83.33% (15/18). The Dice coefficient for the segmentation performance was 52.68., Conclusion: We developed a novel algorithm referred to as the AMCL algorithm with mean PIBs to effectively and automatically detect and segment FLAIR-negative FCD lesions. This work is the first study to apply a CNN-based model to detect and segment FCD lesions in images of FLAIR-negative lesions., (© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Association of Physicists in Medicine.)

It was highlighted that the original article [1] contained an error in the Quantitative evaluation of Methods. A bracket was misplaced in the formula. This Correction article shows the incorrect and correct formula.

Background: Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) is a neuronal migration disorder and is a major cause of drug-resistant epilepsy. However, many focal abnormalities remain undetected during routine visual inspection, and many patients with histologically confirmed FCD have normal fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR-negative) images. The aim of this study was to quantitatively evaluate the changes in cortical thickness with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of patients to identify FCD lesions from FLAIR-negative images., Methods: We first used the three-dimensional (3D) Laplace method to calculate the cortical thickness for individuals and obtained the cortical thickness mean image and cortical thickness standard deviation (SD) image based on all 32 healthy controls. Then, a cortical thickness extension map was computed by subtracting the cortical thickness mean image from the cortical thickness image of each patient and dividing the result by the cortical thickness SD image. Finally, clusters of voxels larger than three were defined as the FCD lesion area from the cortical thickness extension map., Results: The results showed that three of the four lesions that occurred in non-temporal areas were detected in three patients, but the detection failed in three patients with lesions that occurred in the temporal area. The quantitative analysis of the detected lesions in voxel-wise on images revealed the following: specificity (99.78%), accuracy (99.76%), recall (67.45%), precision (20.42%), Dice coefficient (30.01%), Youden index (67.23%) and area under the curve (AUC) (83.62%)., Conclusion: Our studies demonstrate an effective method to localize lesions in non-temporal lobe regions. This novel method automatically detected FCD lesions using only FLAIR-negative images from patients and was based only on cortical thickness feature. The method is noninvasive and more effective than a visual analysis for helping doctors make a diagnosis.

Stereotactic biopsy (STB) is commonly used in the pathological diagnosis of intracranial lesions. The associated complication and mortality rates are low, but few reports with large sample sizes have assessed the complications of STB for lesions in the brain midline.To evaluate the complications of STB of lesions in the sellar region, pineal region, and brainstem.This was a retrospective analysis of patients who underwent STB of lesions in the sellar region, pineal region, and brainstem at the Neurosurgery Department, Sixth Medical Center, PLA General Hospital, China, between January 2015 and December 2017. The rates of and possible reasons for surgical complications (including bleeding) and mortality were analyzed.A total of 145 patients underwent STB of midline brain lesions, including 16 (11.0%) in the sellar region, 18 (12.4%) in the pineal region, and 111 (76.6%) in the brainstem. Successful biopsy of the sellar region, pineal region, and brainstem was achieved in 16/16 (100%), 18/18 (100%), and 107/111 (96.4%) patients, respectively. There were no complications following STB of lesion in the sellar or pineal regions. Complications occurred in 17/111 patients (15.3%) during/after brainstem biopsy, three of whom died (2.7%). The main clinical manifestations were facioplegia, facial pain, changes in blood pressure and heart rate, and difficulty breathing.STB of lesions in the sellar region, pineal region, and brainstem had a high success rate, but mortality was 2.7%. The occurrence of complications (15.3%) was closely related to the anatomical and functional characteristics of the region biopsied.

The present study evaluated drug distribution and clinical safety in treating patients with cystic craniopharyngioma (CP) with intracavitary radiotherapy using phosphorus-32 ( 32 P) colloid. In total, 40 patients who were recently diagnosed with primary or recurrent cystic CP were enrolled into the study. Patients underwent stereotactic intracavitary therapy and were administered 32 P colloid and iopamidol-300 (1:1 dilution). Head computed tomography (CT) scans were performed 2 h after surgery in order to assess drug distribution and leakage. Results obtained from the ophthalmic examination (visual acuity, visual field and fundus), enhanced head magnetic resonance imaging and/or CT scans, blood analysis, coagulation tests, electrolyte tests, pituitary hormone level analysis, and hepatic and renal function tests were compared between the 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 mCi groups. The 32 P colloid per minute radioactive count was quantitatively measured in urine and blood samples using a CAPRAC well-type NaI γ counter at 1, 3 and 7 days post-surgery. In total, 6, 2 and 1 case(s) from the 2, 1.5 and 1 mCi groups, respectively, demonstrated heterogeneous drug distribution and intracavitary cerebrospinal fluid leakage. Furthermore, out of 24 patients, no significant differences were identified in blood analysis, blood biochemical measurements and pituitary hormone levels prior to and 7 days after surgery. Blood 32 P deposition returned to normal levels within 3 days after surgery, whereas urine deposition returned to normal within 7 days after surgery. Methods utilized in the present study were advantageous in terms of convenience, speed and low cost, therefore, these techniques are suitable for continuous monitoring of patient 32 P colloid deposition.

Some patients with temporal lobe epilepsy have bilateral discharges and a few have bilateral medial temporal sclerosis. Stereotactic bilateral radiofrequency thermocoagulation (RFTC) of the amygdalohippocampal complex can terminate seizures or reduce seizure severity in patients with bilateral medial temporal lobe epilepsy (BMTLE). To explore the safety and efficacy of bilateral transfrontal minimal RFTC of the amygdalohippocampal complex for the treatment of BMTLE. A total of 12 BMTLE patients were treated with bilateral transfrontal minimal RFTC of the amygdalohippocampal complex under limited coagulations. The volumes of coagulated lesions were less than 0.6 cm 3 Clinical outcomes were evaluated using Engel's classification, the Liverpool Seizure Severity Scale (LSSS) 2.0, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), and Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R). Quality of life (QOL) was evaluated using the 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). Of the 12 patients, five (42%) were assessed as Engel Class I during 12-62 months of follow-up. LSSS scores declined sharply compared with the baseline of patients not in the seizure-free category. Functions of memory and intelligence declined transiently without statistical significance (p>0.05) immediately after surgery, but improved significantly (p<0.05) six months later. The qualities of life improved except vitality. Bilateral transfrontal minimal RFTC of the amygdalohippocampal complex may terminate seizures or reduce seizure severity in patients with BMTLE. Under limited coagulations, neuropsychological function was not affected but improved along with seizure control.

Background: Despite advances in surgical techniques in the management of the brain abscess, continuous systemic long-term antibiotics are necessary and crucial. This study was designed to evaluate the effect of intracavity administration of high-dose antibiotics on the course of antibiotic therapy., Methods: Between 2003 and 2013, 55 patients with bacterial brain abscesses (83 abscesses) were treated with stereotactic aspiration and intracavity injection of high-dose antibiotics combined with a short course systemic antibiotic therapy. Antibiotics of one-eighth daily systemic dosage were injected into the abscess cavity after stereotactic aspiration and intravenous antibiotics were given in all patients for 3 to 4 weeks. The results of the group treated with stereotactic aspiration and intracavity injection of antibiotic solution were compared to the results of our previous patients treated by stereotactic aspiration only., Results: Thirty-nine males and 16 females (age ranging from 1.5 to 76 years; mean age 38.7 years) were included in this study. During the follow-up (mean 26.2 months, ranging from 6 to 72 months), all the abscesses subsided with no recurrence. No adverse effects related to topical use of antibiotics occurred. At the end of follow-up, 38 patients had good outcomes, 11 had mild neurological deficits, 3 had moderate deficits, 1 was in vegetative state, and 2 died of accidents not related to brain abscesses. Compared with conventional stereotactic aspiration and drainage, intracavity injection of antibiotics shorted the course of consecutive systemic intravenous antibiotics by average 10.8 days without an increase of the recurrence rate of abscesses., Conclusions: Our results indicate that topical application of antibiotics into the brain abscess cavity helps to reduce the length of systemic antibiotic therapy, decreases the abscess recurrence rate, avoids the side effects of long-term high dose antibiotics, shortens the hospitalization and reduces treatment costs.

Objective: To explore the clinical and imaging features of tumefactive demyelinating lesions (TDL) and glioma., Methods: The brain computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy ((1)H-MRS) features of 60 pathologically confirmed TDL patients and 65 glioma ones, hospitalized at Navy General Hospital from 2005 to 2013, were reviewed and analyzed., Results: The mean onset age of glioma was significantly older than that of TDL. The onset symptom was headache for TDL and headache and epilepsy for glioma. The features of lesions on brain CT scan: no hyperdensity in TDL group and 39 with hyperdense lesions in glioma group. Tissue necrosis was more frequently found in lesions of glioma than TDL, especially for higher grade glioma. And increased β and γ-Glx on (1)H-MRS was most frequently found in TDL., Conclusion: The onset age of glioma is older than TDL. The headache is the top onset symptoms of TDL and epiplesy occurs frequently only in glioma. The hyperdense lesions on CT scan support more the diagnosis of glioma. The lesions with tissue necrosis may be a diagnostic clue for high grade glioma. On (1)H-MRS, increased β and γ-Glx are most frequently found in TDL. Dynamic observation of imaging changes may be more important for facilitating the diagnosis of TDL, especially in conjunctions with imaging characteristics and clinical features.

To search for a method for treatment of bilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (BTLE), we report one patient with BTLE experienced bilateral stereotactic radiofrequency amygdalohippocampectomy (SAHE). Neuropsychological examinations were performed before and 5 days, and 6, 18, and 48 months after operation. No seizure occurred in the follow-up time, and no long-term memory and intelligence deficits were found except for a transient decline of the scores immediately after operation. Because severe damage of memory could be caused by bilateral resection surgery, bilateral SAHE should be considered as a possible approach for the treatment of BTLE. However, further studies with accumulation of cases are needed, especially in the detailed assessment of neuropsychological function., (Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2013 International League Against Epilepsy.)