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A 25-year-old woman presented with ophthalmic and neurological manifestations. Her ocular manifestations included bilateral uveitis, multifocal retinal phlebitis, vitreitis and multiple retinal haemorrhages. Her neurological manifestations included migrainous headaches with visual aura, transient sensory symptoms and posterior circulation Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA). Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain demonstrated lesions that involved the deep white matter lesions initially and progressed to also involve the juxta cortical white and deep grey matter and brain stem, but without further neurological manifestations. She was sequentially treated with intravenous and oral glucocorticoid, cyclophosphamide and mycophenolate mofetil, but she continued to suffer with persistent episodes of retinal haemorrhages. Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL), Susac syndrome and Behcet's disease were considered in the differential diagnosis. Genetic workup and clinical picture were not suggestive of the former two. Further history of oro-genital ulceration in younger age emerged, which pointed strongly towards a diagnosis of Behcet's disease with neurological involvement. She was treated with infliximab and methotrexate with complete resolution of her symptoms and withdrawal of corticosteroids for the first time in over two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Advances in medicine and public health mean that people are living longer; however, a significant proportion of that increased lifespan is spent in a prolonged state of declining health and wellbeing which places increasing pressure on medical, health and social services. There is a social and economic need to develop strategies to prevent or delay age-related disease and maintain lifelong health. Several studies have suggested links between the gut microbiome and age-related disease, which if confirmed would present a modifiable target for intervention development. The MOTION study aims to determine whether and how changes in the gut microbiome are associated with physical and mental capacity. A comprehensive longitudinal multiparameter study such as this has not been previously undertaken. Methods: MOTION is a longitudinal prospective cohort study with a focus on gut health and cognitive function. 360 healthy individuals aged 60 years and older, living in East Anglia, UK will be recruited to the study, stratified into one of three risk groups (cohorts) for developing dementia based on their cognitive function. Participants will attend study appointments every six months over four years, providing stool and blood samples and a health questionnaire. Participants will also undergo physical measurements and cognitive tests at alternating appointments, and undergo Optical Coherence Tomography scans at 3 timepoints. Two subgroups of participants in the study will provide colonic tissue biopsies (n = ≥30 from each cohort), and brain imaging (n = 30) at two timepoints. Discussion: This study will provide new insights into the gut-(microbiota)-brain axis and the relationship between age-associated changes in gut microbe populations and cognitive health. Such insights could help develop new microbe-based strategies to improve lifelong health and wellbeing. Trial registration: This study is registered in the ClinicalTrials.gov Database with ID: NCT04199195 Registered: May 14, 2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most neuroimaging experiments that investigate how tools and their actions are represented in the brain use visual paradigms where tools or hands are displayed as 2D images and no real movements are performed. These studies discovered selective visual responses in occipitotemporal and parietal cortices for viewing pictures of hands or tools, which are assumed to reflect action processing, but this has rarely been directly investigated. Here, we examined the responses of independently visually defined category-selective brain areas when participants grasped 3D tools (N = 20; 9 females). Using real-action fMRI and multivoxel pattern analysis, we found that grasp typicality representations (i.e., whether a tool is grasped appropriately for use) were decodable from hand-selective areas in occipitotemporal and parietal cortices, but not from tool-, object-, or body-selective areas, even if partially overlapping. Importantly, these effects were exclusive for actions with tools, but not for biomechanically matched actions with control nontools. In addition, grasp typicality decoding was significantly higher in hand than tool-selective parietal regions. Notably, grasp typicality representations were automatically evoked even when there was no requirement for tool use and participants were naive to object category (tool vs nontools). Finding a specificity for typical tool grasping in hand-selective, rather than tool-selective, regions challenges the long-standing assumption that activation for viewing tool images reflects sensorimotor processing linked to tool manipulation. Instead, our results show that typicality representations for tool grasping are automatically evoked in visual regions specialized for representing the human hand, the primary tool of the brain for interacting with the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: While evidence suggests that lobar intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) is linked with dementia and cognitive impairment, the association between cognition and mortality risk from ICH is unclear. Aims: To examine the association between dementia or cognitive impairment and short- and medium-term mortality post ICH. Methods: Patients with primary ICH were classified into lobar and non-lobar ICH using radiological criteria. Patients'' characteristics and radiological measures were collected at the baseline along with history of dementia and cognitive impairment. Mortality risks at 7, 30, 60, and 90days were assessed using multiple logistic regression adjusting for potential confounders identified as significant associates in univariate models. Results: A total of 136 patients (males 50%, mean age 77years, SD 10) were included in this study. Out of 53 (39%) patients with lobar ICH 47 (89%) were classified as having possible and 6 (11%) as probable cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). In lobar ICH the prevalence of history of dementia or cognitive impairment, confusion at presentation, previous ICH, multiple haemorrhages, and initial haematoma volume were significantly higher (p<0.05). In lobar ICH the significant mortality predictors (p<0.05) were history of dementia or cognitive impairment (90days), prior antiplatelet use (60 and 90days), initial haematoma volume (60days), male sex (30 and 60days), age (30, 60, 90days), and low Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) (7 and 30days). In non-lobar ICH prior use of anticoagulation, initial haematoma volume, low GCS and age were significant mortality predictors (p<0.05). Conclusion: A history of dementia or cognitive impairment is more common in lobar CAA-related ICH and it is a medium-term mortality predictor in lobar ICH but not in deep non-lobar ICH. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A letter to the editor is presented which discusses the case of a 78-year-old woman who was diagnosed with Wegener's granulomatosis.