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Objectives: Idiopathic rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) is characterized by vocalizations, jerks, and motor behaviors during REM sleep, often associated with REM-related dream content, which is considered a prodromal stage of α-synucleinopathy. The results of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) reflecting affective Theory of Mind (ToM) are inconsistent in α-synucleinopathy. The present study tried to investigate the RME in patients with iRBD. Methods: A total of 35 patients with iRBD and 26 healthy controls were included in the study. All participants were administered the RME and the cognitive assessments according to a standard procedure. The patients with iRBD were further divided into two groups (high or low RME) according to the scores of the RME (> 21, or ≤ 20). Results: The patients with iRBD had worse scores on cognitive tests compared with healthy controls involving global cognitive screening, memory, and visuospatial abilities (p < 0.05), but the scores of the RME were similar between the two groups (20.83 ± 3.38, 20.58 ± 3.43) (p ˃ 0.05). Patients with low RME had more obvious cognitive impairments than healthy controls. After applying Bonferroni correction for multiple tests, the low REM group only performed worse on the Sum of trials 1 to 5 and delayed recall of the RAVLT compared with the healthy control group (p < 0.001, = 0.002). The RME correlated with the scores of cognitive tests involving executive function, attention, memory, and visuospatial function. Conclusions: The changes in RME had a relationship with cognitive impairments, especially memory, in patients with iRBD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To clarify the existence of monophasic neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders (NMOSD) and to identify predictive factors of long-term relapse-free form. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 289 Chinese patients with NMOSD. Selected subjects were divided into three groups based on the time interval between disease onset and the first relapse, if any. Clinical and imaging data were acquired from each patient's medical record and evaluated as predictive factors for NMOSD. Results: In total, none of the participating patients exhibited a monophasic form of NMOSD. Rather, 241 patients were selected for relapse tendency analysis; 143 (59.3%) patients relapsed within the first year, 66 (27.4%) during 1–5 years, and 32 (13.3%) beyond 5 years. Such onset symptoms as optic neuritis (ON) and non-longitudinally extensive transverse myelitis (LETM) were independent prognostic factors for a prolonged remission interval (P < 0.05). The relapse rate was bi-modal for ON patients in the first year (47.9%) and beyond 5 years (24.0%) after disease onset, respectively. However, most TM and area postrema syndrome (APS) patients experienced an attack within the first year (61.3% for TM and 76.9% for APS). A survival analysis showed that attacks with APS (P < 0.0001) and TM (P < 0.05) have a significantly higher risk of early relapse than with ON and that seropositive aquaporin-4 antibody may shorten the relapse interval for all onset symptoms (P < 0.0001). Conclusions: Our study indicated that the monophasic form of NMOSD may not exist when a sufficient follow-up period is considered. Onset phenotypes with ON, non-APS, or non-LETM attacks had a lower risk of early relapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Eating abnormalities are one of the core symptoms of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), especially for behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD), and semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA).Methods: A group of FTD patients (43 bvFTD, 29 svPPA) underwent single-photon emission CT (SPECT) to measure the region cerebral blood flow (rCBF). The Cambridge Behavioral Inventory (CBI) was used to measure the eating abnormalities. A whole-brain voxel-based correlation between eating abnormalities and rCBF was investigated.Results: In bvFTD, the sweet preference was correlated with decreased rCBF in the bilateral gyrus rectus and temporal pole, and eating the same food was correlated with the left ventral anterior cingulate cortex. In svPPA, decreased rCBF in the left inferior temporal gyrus was correlated with eating the same food.Conclusions: These findings showed that either different symptoms in the same subtype or the same symptom in different subtypes of FTD may be correlated with different regions, indicating different neural mechanisms behind them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) likely represents the prodromal stage of synucleinopathy. The present study investigated how levels of serum uric acid (UA) affect cognition and motor function in patients with iRBD. A total of 42 patients with iRBD and 45 healthy controls were included. All participants were given cognitive tests and motor assessments. Serum UA concentrations were measured. The patients were further divided into two groups (high or low UA) according to serum UA level. The level of serum UA was similar between the patients with iRBD and the healthy controls, whereas the patients showed impaired executive, memory, and visuospatial functions. The patients with low UA levels had longer durations of RBD. Lower scores involving attention, executive function, and language domain were also found in the patients with low UA, whereas the scores of the patients with high UA were similar to those of the healthy controls. Regarding memory domain, the low UA group had worse scores than the healthy controls, whereas the scores of high UA group fell between those of the low UA group and the healthy controls. Motor function was not affected in any of the groups. UA affects cognitive function but not motor function in patients with iRBD, which could contribute to its antioxidant and neuroprotective roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the role of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) (Beijing version) and its memory tasks on detecting different mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subtypes including amnestic MCI (aMCI) and nonamnestic MCI (naMCI) in memory clinics. A total of 121 patients with MCI and 53 healthy controls were included. Fifty-six aMCI-multiple domains (amMCI), 32 aMCI-single domain (asMCI), and 33 naMCI patients were diagnosed according to extensive cognitive tests. All participants were administered by the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the MoCA. Patients with amMCI performed worse than patients with asMCI, naMCI, and healthy controls on the MMSE and the MoCA (p < 0.001). The area under the curve (AUC) value for the MoCA when comparing the amMCI and control groups was 0.884 (p < 0.001), which was superior to that of the MMSE. The AUC value decreased to 0.687 when applied to the naMCI and control groups (p = 0.007), which was still higher than that of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) or the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure (ROCF). Delayed free recall or category prompted recall in the MoCA had roles in differentiating asMCI and controls groups with AUC value of 0.717 (p = 0.002) and 0.691 (p = 0.005), respectively. The MoCA is a good screening tool for detecting different types of MCI and is suitable for patients in outpatient clinics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]