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The maritime environment is significantly different compared with the terrestrial environment, which will inevitably have a certain impact on the brain functional activities of sailors and lead to differential changes in the brain functional connectivity (FC). Therefore, it has a great significance to explore the impact of the marine environment on the brain functional activities of sailors. It is not only the need for more detailed research work of sailors, but also an inevitable requirement for accurately revealing the impact of the marine environment. In this paper, the functional magnetic resonance image data of 33 sailors before and after sailing were used to study the brain FCs changes of sailors at the activated voxels level, in which the activated voxels were obtained by independent component analysis combined with Anatomical Automatic Labelling template. Then, the FCs between the corresponding brain regions of these activated voxels were statistically analyzed to obtain the FCs with significant differences (DFCs) between sailors before and after sailing. Finally, the classification evaluation of sailors before and after sailing was realized by using the FCs and DFCs as the characteristic samples in support vector machine. The results indicated that the DFCs between the activated brain regions had better discriminative performance for sailors before and after sailing, especially for the FCs within Prefrontal lobe and Occipital lobe as well as those between them which showed a significant difference between sailors before and after sailing.

The purpose of this work was to use near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) to investigate the spectral characteristics and frontal lobe activation in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) during a verbal fluency task. Thirty-seven patients with OCD, who met the diagnostic criteria of International Classification of Diseases 10 (ICD-10), were recruited. The total score of the Symptom Checklist (SCL-90, grade 1-5) was ≥160 points. The total score of the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale was ≥7 points. The changes in frontal lobe blood flow were measured by NIRS when completing a verbal fluency task. Then, the differences between obsessive-compulsive thoughts and obsessive-compulsive behaviors in OCD, and the concentration variation of oxygenate hemoglobin (Oxy-Hb) and deoxygenate hemoglobin (Deoxy-Hb) were investigated. The difference was significant (P

Background. Drastic functional reorganization was observed in the ipsilateral primary motor cortex (M1) of a Paralympic long jumper with a unilateral below-knee amputation in our previous study. However, it remains unclear whether long-term para-sports are associated with ipsilateral M1 reorganization since only 1 athlete with amputation was investigated. Objective. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the long-term para-sports and ipsilateral M1 reorganization after lower limb amputation. Methods. Lower limb rhythmic muscle contraction tasks with functional magnetic resonance imaging and T1-weighted structural imaging were performed in 30 lower limb amputees with different para-sports experiences in the chronic phase. Results. Brain activity in the ipsilateral primary motor and somatosensory areas (SM1) as well as the contralateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, SM1, and inferior temporal gyrus showed a positive correlation with the years of routine para-sports participation (sports years) during contraction of the amputated knee. Indeed, twelve of the 30 participants who exhibited significant ipsilateral M1 activation during amputated knee contraction had a relatively longer history of para-sports participation. No significant correlation was found in the structural analysis. Conclusions. Long-term para-sports could lead to extensive reorganization at the brain network level, not only bilateral M1 reorganization but also reorganization of the frontal lobe and visual pathways. These results suggest that the interaction of injury-induced and use-dependent cortical plasticity might bring about drastic reorganization in lower limb amputees.

Diabetics are prone to postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD). The occurrence may be related to the damage of the prefrontal lobe. In this study, the prefrontal lobe was segmented based on an improved clustering algorithm in patients with diabetes, in order to evaluate the relationship between prefrontal lobe volume and COPD. In this study, a total of 48 diabetics who underwent selective noncardiac surgery were selected. Preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images of the patients were segmented based on the improved clustering algorithm, and their prefrontal volume was measured. The correlation between the volume of the prefrontal lobe and Z -score or blood glucose was analyzed. Qualitative analysis shows that the gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid based on the improved clustering algorithm were easy to distinguish. Quantitative evaluation results show that the proposed segmentation algorithm can obtain the optimal Jaccard coefficient and the least average segmentation time. There was a negative correlation between the volume of the prefrontal lobe and the Z -score. The cut-off value of prefrontal lobe volume for predicting POCD was

Internet addiction is associated with an increased risk of suicidal behavior and can lead to brain dysfunction among adolescents. However, whether brain dysfunction occurs in adolescents with Internet addiction who attempt suicide remains unknown. This observational cross-sectional study enrolled 41 young Internet addicts, aged from 15 to 20 years, from the Department of Psychiatry, the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, China from January to May 2018. The participants included 21 individuals who attempted suicide and 20 individuals with Internet addiction without a suicidal attempt history. Brain images in the resting state were obtained by a 3.0 T magnetic resonance imaging scanner. The results showed that activity in the gyrus frontalis inferior of the right pars triangularis and the right pars opercularis was significantly increased in the suicidal attempt group compared with the non-suicidal attempt group. In the resting state, the prefrontal lobe of adolescents who had attempted suicide because of Internet addiction exhibited functional abnormalities, which may provide a new basis for studying suicide pathogenesis in Internet addicts. The study was authorized by the Ethics Committee of Chongqing Medical University, China (approval No. 2017 Scientific Research Ethics (2017-157)) on December 11, 2017.

The effectiveness of training prefrontal lobe function for suppressing cognitive decline or improving cognitive function has been reported. Some epidemiological studies suggested that gardening activities can contribute to suppression of cognitive decline. In our previous studies using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), we reported the possibility of frontal pole (FP) activation of healthy older adults during gardening activities in the quasi-laboratory setting. The objective of this study was to examine the impacts of a three-month continual practice of the watering task in the actual gardening settings on the FP activation of healthy older adults. The participants were 18 right-handed healthy older adults without a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment or dementia (M = 71.7 years ± SD 5.0, range: 63 - 84 years) who lived independently at home. We asked the participants to continue watering at home for three months in the same way as the research task in the fNIRS measurement. After a three-month intervention, the participants’ task performance improved compared with that of pre-intervention. In addition, the Oxy-Hb values in the right lateral FP during the third trial in the post-intervention measurement were significantly greater compared with the pre-intervention measurement. This study suggested that even a gardening activity with a small number of processes such as watering, if the activity is continued for a certain period of time, can suppress the decline of the FP activation of healthy older adults. Combination of various gardening activities has the potential to be a further cognitive training for activating the FP.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is an emerging brain intervention technique. However, the effects of tDCS on stroke patients are unclear. In this study, Granger Causality (GC) is used to construct brain functional networks of the tDCS group (9 cases) and the sham tDCS group (11 cases). Some parameters of brain functional networks are analyzed comparatively, such as degree, clustering coefficient, betweenness centrality, characteristic path length, and efficiency. In tDCS group, the results show that the distribution of degree changes greatly in left prefrontal lobe and left temporal lobe regions, the distribution of betweenness centrality transfers, characteristic path length decreases, clustering coefficient and efficiency increase significantly (p

The supplementary motor area (SMA) syndrome is a frequently encountered clinical phenomenon associated with surgery of the dorsomedial prefrontal lobe. The region has a known motor sequencing function and the dominant pre-SMA specifically is associated with more complex language functions; the SMA is furthermore incorporated in the negative motor network. The SMA has a rich interconnectivity with other cortical regions and subcortical structures using the frontal aslant tract (FAT) and the frontostriatal tract (FST). The development of the SMA syndrome is positively correlated with the extent of resection of the SMA region, especially its medial side. This may be due to interruption of the nearby callosal association fibres as the contralateral SMA has a particular important function in brain plasticity after SMA surgery. The syndrome is characterized by a profound decrease in interhemispheric connectivity of the motor network hubs. Clinical improvement is related to increasing connectivity between the contralateral SMA region and the ipsilateral motor hubs. Overall, most patients know a full recovery of the SMA syndrome, however a minority of patients might continue to suffer from mild motor and speech dysfunction. Rarely, no recovery of neurological function after SMA region resection is reported.

The cranial PPG signal is acquired using reflectance-type cranial photoplethysmography (CPPG) sensor on prefrontal lobe for various emotions by detecting the blood volume change (plethysmography effect). First step is the development of reflectance-type optical PPG sensor using IR source and detector pair. The acquisition of signal was done on prefrontal lobe. The CPPG is captured while the subject is listening Hindi songs of various emotions. Statistical and Eigen-space features are extracted after capturing the CPPG signal. Happy and sad emotions are recognized using KNN, SVM, and ANN classifiers with different features. The accuracy of the KNN classifier is observed to be 80%, SVM classifier 60%, and ANN classifier 70%. Classification using statistical features exhibits an accuracy of 70% for KNN classifier and 60% for ANN classifier. Classification using Eigen features exhibits an accuracy of 80% for KNN classifier and 60% for ANN. Combined features (both statistical and Eigen space features) exhibit an accuracy of 70% for KNN classifier, 60% for SVM, and 70% for ANN. Analysis with these features exhibits that these features can be used for discriminating functional activity.

Background Bipolar disorder (BD) might be associated in disturbances in brain networks. However, little is known about the abnormalities in structural brain connectivity which might be related to vulnerability to BD and predictive of the emergence of manic symptoms. No previous study has investigated the effect of subthreshold syndromes on structural dysconnectivity in offspring of parents with BD (BDoff). Methods We investigated diffusion weighted images of 70 BDoff and 48 healthy controls (HC). Nineteen of the 70 BDoff had presented with subthreshold syndromes indicating a clinical high-risk (BDoff-CHR) and other 51 BDoff had no such history (BDoff-non-CHR). Global and regional network properties, rich club organization and inter-regional connectivity in BDoff and healthy controls were investigated using graph analytical methods and network-based-statistics (NBS). Results Global properties of WM networks appeared to be intact in BDoff-CHR and BDoff-non-CHR. However, decreased regional connectivity in right occipito-parietal areas and cerebellum was a common feature of both BDoff groups. Importantly, decreased interregional connectivity between nodes in right and left prefrontal regions, nodes in right prefrontal lobe and right temporal lobe and nodes in left occipital area and left cerebellum were evident in BDoff-CHR but not BDoff-non-CHR. Limitations The cross-sectional nature of the study was the main consideration. Conclusion Decreased regional connectivity in right posterior brain regions might be related to vulnerability to BD. On the other hand, interregional dysconnectivity in anterior frontal and limbic regions and left posterior brain regions might be evident in individuals genetically at risk for developing BD who had experienced subthreshold mood symptoms.

A 56-year-old woman presented with electroclinical focal seizures in the setting of hyperglycemia (808 mg/dL) and elevated HbA1c of 14.7%. She had varying seizure semiology, consisting of early forced head turn to the left, speech arrest, left facial twitching, and impaired awareness. Her seizures arose from the right frontotemporal area on EEG (figure 1). MRI showed hypointensities in the right prefrontal lobe that resolved after 6 months (figure 2).

Our aim was to identify the longitudinal changes in gray matter volume (GMV) and secondary alterations of structural covariance after pontine stroke (PS). Structural MRI and behavioral scores were obtained at 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months in 11 patients with PS. Twenty healthy subjects underwent the same examination only once. We used voxel-based morphometry and seed-based structural covariance to investigate the altered GMV and structural covariance patterns. Furthermore, the associations between the GMV changes and behavioral scores were assessed. With the progression of the disease, GMV decreased significantly in the bilateral cerebellar posterior lobe (ipsilateral Crus II (CBE Crus II_IL) and contralateral Crus I (CBE Crus I_CL)), which were initially detected at the first month and then continued to decrease during the following 6 months. Based on the CBE Crus II_IL and CBE Crus I_CL as seed regions, structural covariance analysis revealed that there were more positively and negatively correlated brain regions in PS group, mainly distributed in the bilateral prefrontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, paralimbic system and cerebellum. In addition, PS group showed more additional correlations between these covariant brain regions, and the changes of GMV in these regions were correlated with behavioral scores related to motor and cognitive functions. These findings indicate that PS could lead to significant GMV atrophy in the bilateral cerebellar posterior lobe at the early stage, accompanied by anomalous structural covariance patterns with more covariant brain regions and additional structural connectivity, which may provide useful information for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of behavioral recovery after PS.

Evidence suggests that the effect of heavy metals on neuroimmune cells lead to neurogenic inflammatory responses. In this study, immune cells [mast cells (MCs) and microglia] and pro-neuroinflammation cytokines (interleukin-1b and tumor necrosis factor-α) were assessed in the prefrontal lobe of rat brains exposed to thimerosal in different timeframes. A total of 108 neonatal Wistar rats were divided into three groups having three subgroups. The experimental groups received a single dose of thimerosal (300 μg/kg) postnatally at 7, 9, 11, and 15 days. The vehicle groups received similar injections of phosphate-buffered saline in a similar manner. The control groups received nothing. Samples of the prefrontal cortex were collected and prepared for stereological, immunohistochemical, and molecular studies at timeframes of 12 or 48 h (acute phase) and 8 days (subchronic phase) after the last injection. The average density of the microglia and MCs increased significantly in the experimental groups. This increase was more evident in the 48 h group. At 8 days after the last injection, there was a significant decrease in the density of the MCs compared to the 12 and 48 h groups. Alterations in pro-inflammatory cytokines were significant for all timeframes. This increase was more evident in the 48 h group after the last injection. There was a significant decrease in both neuroinflammatory cytokines at 8 days after the last injection. It was found that ethylmercury caused abnormal neurogenic inflammatory reactions and alterations in the neuroimmune cells that remained for a longer period in the brain than in the blood.

Objective To achieve the early diagnosis of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), this paper proposes a multi-dimensional index, which combines the advantages of the multiscale fuzzy entropy (FuzzyEn) and phase locking value (PLV) based on electroencephalography (EEG). Methods The complexity and synchronization of the EEG were characterized using FuzzyEn and PLV in five frequency bands, respectively. By combining the two methods, the changes in the health of brain function were comprehensively analyzed. The extreme learning machine (ELM) method was used to classify aMCI patients based on a multi-dimensional index. Results Compared with aMCI patients, the multiscale FuzzyEn and PLV of normal controls (NC) were higher and statistically significant (P Concludes The multi-dimensional index based on prefrontal lobe could diagnosis cognitive decline of aMCI patients. Significance The results showed that features integrated multiscale FuzzyEn and PLV could be used as a biomarker of cognitive decline and help realize the early diagnosis of aMCI patients.

Electroencephalography (EEG) can globally monitor neural activity in millisecond scale, which is critical for identifying causality of human brain functions and mechanisms. However, to obtain accurate EEG stimulation-response relationship one usually needs to repeat multiple-ten times of stimulation-response recording to average out background signals of other irreverent brain activities, making real-time monitoring difficult to be accomplished. In this study, we explored new approaches which don’t require repeats. EEG signals were recorded from subjects doing mind tasks including image formation of motor functions or emotional subjects and mathematical calculations in mind. Time stamps in EEG recording were used to mark task completion time. Signals within 300ms or 1,000ms before task completions were analyzed. Using sLoreta 3-D tracking we found that delta-wave activities were mostly located at frontal lobe or visual cortex, isolated with each other. Theta-wave activity tended to rotate around cortex with low spatial correlation. Beta-wave behaved like inquiry types of oscillations between any two regions across cortex and was consistently correlated with each other over different areas. Alpha-wave activity looked like mixture of theta and beta activities. Together with sliding window dynamic connectivity method we confirmed beta waves play key roles in linking different brain areas together for information inquiry. Theta and low Alpha are more likely playing the role of information control, integration, and image formation. With the proposed new method we demonstrated reproducible linkages of subject behaviors with 3-D tracing characteristics along the 3 categories: emotion, math calculation, and motor functions without using event repeats.

Background: A growing body of evidence has demonstrated that cerebrovascular function abnormality plays a key role in occurrence and worsening of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Reduction of cerebral blood flow (CBF) is a sensitive marker to early perfusion deficiencies in AD. As one of the most important therapies in complementary and alternative medicine, manual acupuncture (MA) has been used in the treatment of AD. However, the moderating effect of MA on CBF remains largely unknown.Objective: To investigate the effect of MA on the behavior and CBF of SAMP8 mice.Methods: SAMP8 mice were randomly divided into the AD, MA, and medicine (M) groups, with SAMR1 mice used as the normal control (N) group. Mice in the M group were treated with donepezil hydrochloride at 0.65 μg/g. In the MA group, MA was applied at Baihui (GV20) and Yintang (GV29) for 20 min. The above treatments were administered once a day for 15 consecutive days. The Morris water maze and arterial spin labeling MRI were used to assess spatial learning and memory in behavior and CBF respectively.Results: Compared with the AD group, both MA and donepezil significantly decreased the escape latency (p < 0.01), while also elevating platform crossover number and the percentage of time and swimming distance in the platform quadrant (p < 0.01 or p < 0.05). The remarkable improvement in escape latency in the MA group appeared earlier than the M group, and no significant statistical significance was observed between the N and MA group with the exception of days 5 and 10. The CBF in the prefrontal lobe and hippocampus in the MA group was substantially higher than in the AD group (p < 0.05) with the exception of the right prefrontal lobe, with similar effects of donepezil.Conclusion: Manual acupuncture can effectively improve the spatial learning, relearning and memory abilities of SAMP8 mice. The increase in CBF in the prefrontal lobe and hippocampus could be an important mechanism for the beneficial cognitive effects of MA in AD.

Although brain death has been accepted by most countries, how to diagnose brain death quickly and accurately is still a very challenging task. Electroencephalography (EEG) is considered to be one of the most effective methods for clinically diagnosing the brain state. In the present study, we investigated if it is possible to find a robust neuro-marker to help doctors diagnose brain death from the perspective of brain information interaction. With 6-channel EEG data collected from prefrontal lobe of 30 patients (deep coma: 13, brain death 17), PLV was used to measure the phase synchronization and quantify the interaction between brain regions. Firstly, we found that there exists significant difference in brain synchronization between brain death patients and deep coma patients. Then, an interesting phenomenon was observed. In all the three low frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha), synchronization between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere (IHPS) is significantly stronger than that only in left (LHPS) or right hemisphere (RHPS) for deep coma patients. However, this phenomenon has not been found in high frequency bands (beta and gamma) and for brain death patients. More importantly, it was verified for almost every patient (only 1 exception). This phenomenon might provide a robust neuro-marker for brain death diagnosis. Finally, we tried to distinguish between brain death and brain coma by monitoring brain synchronization in real time. The results also show the effectiveness and accuracy of our method. The method proposed in this paper can not only provide doctors with more stable and effective information, but also hope to develop a new visualization tool to assist brain death diagnosis.

Background: Executive function tends to decline as people age. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is assumed to have beneficial effects on various cognitive functions. Some prior investigations have shown that repeated sessions of tDCS enhance the executive function performance of healthy elderly people by mediating cognitive training gains. However, studies of the effect of long-term stimulation on executive function without cognitive training are absent. Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore whether the executive function of healthy older adults could be enhanced with long-term tDCS alone applied on the prefrontal cortex. Methods: Sixty-five cognitively normal older adults were enrolled and randomly assigned to two groups: an anodal tDCS group and a sham tDCS group. The participants in the two groups received anodal stimulation or sham stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal lobe, for 30 min per day for 10 consecutive days. Executive function was tested before stimulation, immediately after stimulation and 3 months after stimulation. Three core components of executive function were tested using a two-back task for updating, a flanker task for inhibition, and a switching task for shifting. Results: Across the three tasks, we failed to discover any differences between the anodal and sham stimulation. Moreover, we found no statistically significant stimulation effect in the follow-up session. Conclusion: Our study does not support the assumption that multiple sessions of tDCS that are independent of cognitive training have a beneficial effect on executive function in healthy older adults, presumably because the effect of the stimulation lies in its amplification of training gains. It indicates that combining traditional cognitive training methods with brain stimulation may be a better approach to improve older adults’ executive function.

Source at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.01.043. Creatine is a key regulator of brain energy homeostasis, and well-balanced creatine metabolism is central in healthy brain functioning. Still, the variability of brain creatine metabolism is largely unattended in magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) research. In the human brain, marginal sex differences in creatine levels have been found in the prefrontal cortex. It is however not known to what degree these sex differences are stable or change with varying gonadal hormone levels. The current study therefore investigated creatine in the prefrontal cortex across the menstrual cycle. In addition, we explored cerebral asymmetries. Creatine, Choline (Cho), N-acetylaspartate (NAA), Myo inositol (mI), and glutamate þ glutamine (Glx) were assessed three times in 15 women and 14 men using MRS. Women were tested in cycle phases of varying hormone levels (menstrual, follicular, and luteal phase). Prefrontal creatine was found to change across the menstrual cycle, in a hemisphere-specific manner. Women in the follicular phase showed increased left prefrontal creatine accompanied with reduced right prefrontal creatine, while this asymmetry was not present in the luteal phase. In men, the creatine levels remained stable across three testing sessions. In general, both men and women were found to have higher creatine levels in the left as compared to the right prefrontal cortex. Exploratory analyses of other metabolites showed similar asymmetries in NAA, Cho, and mI, while Cho also showed a menstrual cycle effect. This is the first time that sex hormone-related changes in creatine metabolism have been demonstrated in the human brain. These findings may have important methodological implications for MRS research, as it supports previous concerns against uncritical usage of creatine as a reference measure for other metabolites, assumed to be invariant across individuals and conditions.

Specific characteristics of the functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) of the hemodynamic response may represent the brain cortical activity levels during mental arithmetic tasks. In this paper, we use hemodynamic response signals of the prefrontal cortex, acquired by a 4-channel fNIRS system to identify the difficulty level of an arithmetic task. To this end, twelve temporal features and several classification methods are used. In addition, most discriminating features are identified by principle component analysis (PCA) method. Experimental results show that the highest accuracy rate of 92.2% is achieved by a linear Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. They also show that skewness and total area of the signal from the 3 cm channel on the left prefrontal lobe are the most discriminating features.

This study involves an experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) to delineate brain activation for execution functional performance. Participates to this experiment of the normal adult (man 4, woman 6) of 10 people, is not inserts the metal all closed phobia and 24.5 year-old average ages which the operating surgeon experience which are not they were.The subject for a functional MRI experiment word -color test prosecuting attorney subject rightly at magnetic pole presentation time of 30 first editions and after presenting, uses SPM 99 programs and the image realignment, after executing a standardization (nomalization), a difference which the signal burglar considers the timely order as lattice does, pixel each image will count there probably is, in order to examine rest and active crossroad dividing independence sample t-test (p

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop the assistive device for accelerator and brake pedals using bio-signals from the prefrontal lobe in the driving simulator and evaluate its performance. Background: There is lack of assistive devices for the driving in peoples with disabilities in Korea. However, if bio-signals and/or brain waves are used at driving a car, the people with serious physical limitations can improve their community mobility. Method: 15 subjects with driver"s license participated in this study for experiment of driving performance evaluation in the simulator. Each subject drove the simulator the same course 10 times in three separated groups which use different interface controllers to accelerate and brake: (1) conventional pedal group, (2) joystick group and (3) bio-signal group(horizontal quick glance of the eyes and clench teeth). All experiments were recorded and the driving performances were evaluated by three inspectors. Results: Average score of bio-signal group for the driving in the simulator was increased 3% compared with the pedal group and was increased 9% compared with the joystick group(p

The sound of digital media would be able to perform communication by stimulating body's senses. Because the sound stimuli could arouse a person into the physiological excitement and sensitivity, which appear as the changes of heartbeat, blood pressure, brain waves(EEG) signals. In this paper, we would like to examine whether the game music mixed with relaxing white noises has an effect to relax game player or not through the EEG changes of game players. For the experiment, we divided game players into group A that plays game while hearing game music mixed with white noises, and group B that plays game while hearing game music not mixed. And we measured the EEG changes of the prefrontal lobe between two groups. The result shows that the game music mixed with white noises has an relaxing effect for the left brain, but fall short of the expectations for the right brain. It would be a basic research which will contribute to the development of serious games for psychotherapy using relaxing white noises.

Compared with event-related potential (ERP) which is widely used in psychology research, functional near-infrared imaging (fNIRI) is a new technique providing hemodynamic information related to brain activity, except for electrophysiological signals. Here, we use both these techniques to study ocular attention. We conducted a series of experiments with a classic paradigm of ocular nonselective attention, and monitored responses with fNIRI and ERP respectively. The results showed that fNIRI measured brain activations in the left prefrontal lobe, while ERPs showed activation in frontal lobe. More importantly, only with the combination measurements of fNIRI and ERP, we were then able to find the pinpoint source of ocular nonselective attention, which is in the left and upper corner in Brodmann area 10. These results demonstrated that fNIRI is a reliable technique in psychology, and the combination of fNIRI and ERP can be promising to reveal more information in the research of brain mechanism.

Driver fatigue is one of the leading causes of traffic accidents. It is imperative to develop a technique to monitor fatigue of drivers in real situation. Near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is now capable of measuring brain functional activity noninvasively in terms of hemodynamic responses sensitively, which shed a light to us that it may be possible to detect fatigue-specified brain functional activity signal. We developed a sensitive, portable and absolute-measure fNIRS, and utilized it to monitor cerebral hemodynamics on car drivers during prolonged true driving. An odd-ball protocol was employed to trigger the drivers’ visual divided attention, which is a critical function in safe driving. We found that oxyhemoglobin concentration and blood volume in prefrontal lobe dramatically increased with driving duration (stand for fatigue degree; 2-10 hours), while deoxyhemoglobin concentration increased to the top at 4 hours then decreased slowly. The behavior performance showed clear decrement only after 6 hours. Our study showed the strong potential of fNIRS combined with divided visual attention protocol in driving fatigue degree monitoring. Our findings indicated the fNIRS-measured hemodynamic parameters were more sensitive than behavior performance evaluation.

This study aimed to evaluate the influence of cognitive demand on prospective-memory in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) using a dual-task paradigm. Fourteen individuals with severe TBI and 14 matched controls were required to undertake two tasks. A lexical-decision task was used as an ongoing task and had two levels of cognitive demand (viz., low and high). The event-based prospective-memory task involved performing a specific action whenever a target stimulus appeared during the ongoing task. The Letter-Number Sequencing Test, the Tower of London and the Controlled Oral Word Association Test were also administered to assess the relationship between prefrontal lobe functions and prospective memory. As hypothesised, participants in the TBI group performed more poorly than participants in the control group on the prospective-memory task in the high but not in the low demand condition. There were significant correlations between prospective-memory task performance and scores on the Letter-Number Sequencing Test and the Controlled Oral Word Association Test. These findings help to clarify the nature of prospective-memory impairment in individuals with TBI and support the involvement of prefrontal processes in prospective remembering.

PURPOSE OF THE REPORT The aim of this study is to observe the abnormalities of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in migraine patients and to evaluate its relation to the severity of the headache in patients with migraine. PATIENTS AND METHODS The rCBF imaging was done on 19 patients with migraine and 15 normal controls using single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). The abnormal character of cerebral perfusion function was analyzed with Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) software, and the headache grade of patients was evaluated with the headache severity measuring scale. RESULTS The results of SPM analysis demonstrated a decreased rCBF on both sides of the frontal and temporal lobes, left parietal lobe, and right occipital lobe (P < 0.001), and increased rCBF focus on the left prefrontal lobe and right temporal lobe (P < 0.001). The headache scores in migraineurs were correlated to the rCBF on the bilateral temporal lobes and right frontal lobe (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS The migraineurs had lower rCBF at the frontal and temporal lobes, and the lower rCBF was correlated to the degree of headache.

OBJECTIVE It is unclear whether atlas-based parcellation is suitable in aging cohorts because age-related brain changes confound the performance of automatic methods. We assessed atlas-based parcellation of the prefrontal lobe in an aging population using visual assessment and volumetric and spatial concordance. METHODS We used an atlas-based approach to parcellate brain MR images of 90 non-demented healthy adults, aged 72.7 ± 0.7 years, and assessed performance. RESULTS Volumetric assessment showed that both single-atlas- and multi-atlas-based methods performed acceptably (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC], 0.74-0.76). Spatial overlap measurements showed that multi-atlas (dice coefficient [DC], 0.84) offered an improvement over the single-atlas (DC, 0.75-0.78) approach. Visual assessment also showed that multi-atlas outperformed single atlas and identified an additional postprocessing step of cerebrospinal fluid removal, enhancing concordance (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.86; DC, 0.89). CONCLUSIONS Atlas-based parcellation performed reasonably well in the aging population. Rigorous performance assessment aided method refinement and emphasizes the importance of age matching and postprocessing. Further work is required in more varied subjects.

Purpose:To understand the role of O2 utilization in the sex differences of fatigue during intermittent activity, we compared the cerebral (prefrontal lobe) and muscle (vastus lateralis) oxygenation of men and women during repeated-sprint exercise (RSE).Methods:Ten men and 10 women matched for initial-sprint mechanical work performed ten, 10 s cycle sprints (with 30 s of rest) under normoxic (NM: 21% FIO2) and acute hypoxic (HY: 13% FIO2) conditions in a randomized single-blind and crossover design. Mechanical work was calculated and arterial O2 saturation (SpO2) was estimated via pulse oximetry during every sprint. Cerebral and muscle oxy- (O2Hb) and deoxy-hemoglobin (HHb) were monitored continuously by near-infrared spectroscopy.Results:Compared with NM, work decrement was accentuated (P = 0.01) in HY for both men (–16.4 ± 10.3%) and women (–16.8 ± 9.0%). This was associated with lower SpO2 and lower cerebral Δ[O2Hb] in both sexes (–13.6 ± 7.5%, P = .008, and –134.5 ± 73.8%, P = .003, respectively). These HY-induced changes were nearly identical in these men and women matched for initial-sprint work. Muscle Δ[HHb] increased 9-fold (P = .009) and 5-fold (P = .02) in men and women, respectively, and plateaued. This muscle deoxygenation was not exacerbated in HY.Conclusions:Results indicate that men and women matched for initial-sprint work experience similar levels of fatigue and systemic, cerebral, and peripheral adjustments during RSE performed in NM and HY. These data suggest that cerebral deoxygenation imposes a limitation to repeated-sprint performance.

In the future of super aging society, it is predicted that the problem of disuse dementia becomes more serious all over the world. The screening is very important medical procedure for recovery. In Japan, KANA Pick-out Test(KPT)1–2) have been used as the most useful method of screening. As KPT isn’t suitable for internationalization and self-screening, Color Meaning and Matching Test(CMMT) was invented first3), and Color Word Pick-out Test(CWPT)4) follows as an advanced method. In this paper, the sensitivity of CWPT on the basis of KPT was measured as the first evaluation. As the second evaluation, the work of prefrontal lobe was examined during the tests using a near infrared spectroscopy. These evaluations are led to appropriateness of CWPT to the screening test of early dementia.

During the past year, nine research projects have used the 4Tesla magnet (for a total of 398 scans), and 55 developmental scans had been completed. Since the last progress report, we upgraded the shim currents which substantially improved the quality of imaging and spectroscopy, especially in problematic regions including the hippocampus and prefrontal lobe. The software platform was upgraded to the latest software version VA25 which provides better management and control of image processes. An auto-align software package was installed in order to improve reproducibility of image orientation and angulation using a template brain. Finally a whole body transmit coil and 7 KW transmitters have been ordered to improve uniformity of the B1-field and yield for arterial spinning. Our plans for the coming year are to test the performance of the auto align software on a large range of subjects with a broad range of brain abnormalities, and to complete the installation of the KW transmitters after the manufacturer performance tests are completed. The Center of Excellence funded six projects and five of these projects have the necessary approvals to begin work. We will continue the call for proposals and review and fund new innovative studies.

Findings from Arnone et al ’s[1][1] systematic review and meta-analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies suggest that patients with bipolar disorder are characterised, in comparison with healthy controls, by significant reductions of whole-brain and prefrontal lobe volumes and by

The purpose of our study was to examine the neuroanatomical correlates of late-onset minor and major depression and to compare them with similar measures obtained from nondepressed controls. Our study groups were comprised of 18 patients with late-onset minor depression, 35 patients diagnosed with late-onset major depression, and 30 nondepressed controls. All subjects were scanned by using a 1.5-tesla MRI scanner. Absolute whole brain volume and normalized measures of prefrontal and temporal lobe volumes were obtained and used for comparison among groups. Our findings indicate that patients with minor depression present with specific neuroanatomical abnormalities that are comparable with the major depression group but significantly different from the controls. Normalized prefrontal lobe volumes show a significant linear trend with severity of depression, with volumes decreasing with illness severity. Whole brain volumes did not differ significantly among groups. These findings have broad implications for the biology of late-life depression and suggest that there may be common neurobiological substrates that underlie all clinically significant forms of late-onset mood disturbances.

Rhesus monkeys were trained in a discriminated conditioned emotional responses paradigm. The discriminated conditioned response (CR) complex consisted of bar-press suppression, increased terminal aortic blood flow, and increased arterial pressure. Bar-press suppression and blood flow responses were temporarily eliminated by single-stage bilateral prefrontal lobectomy but not by extensive posterior cortical ablation, 2-stage prefrontal lobe removal, or 3-stage prefrontal cortical surface ablation. The blood pressure CR was attenuated by almost every surgical operation. The changes in heart rate paralleled changes in general activity. These data indicate that the prefrontal lobes influence the conditioned suppression of ongoing rewarded behavior and the vascular responses accompanying the suppression. The time course for recovery of the somatic CR after lobectomy differed from those of the cardiovascular CRs.

No. 2345, æt 27, transferred from Saughton Hall to Murray's Asylum, Perth, on June 4th, 1897. An unmarried male.

For many years the prefrontal lobes were considered to be “silent areas” since electrical stimulation elicited no visible responses and removal in experimental animals failed to produce any obvious deficits. Nevertheless the literature of the nineteenth century contains some extremely important observations on the possible role of this part of the brain, which have particular relevance to man’s study of his own mind.

THE loss of an animal's ability to perform delay tasks following bilateral prefrontal lobe ablations is well established and has been attributed to diverse causes, notable among which is the factor of attention. Equally established are techniques which, by altering the animal's physiological state or the problem situation, are effective in restoring the animal's task performance to the pre-operative level. Typically, the techniques reduce the animal's distractability or emphasize the cueing procedure thereby presumably enhancing the animal's ability to attend1,2. While this evidence implicates attention as an important factor in delayed response, it does so indirectly, and thus far attention has eluded direct study as a dependent variable.

Introduction The right prefrontal lobe has not traditionally been considered eloquent brain. Resection of tumours within this region does not typically lead to permanent functional impairment. In this report, we highlight the case of a patient who developed autobiographical memory loss following an uncomplicated resection of a right prefrontal tumour. Case material A previously fit and well 15-year old presented with a persistent right-sided headache. An MRI demonstrated an expanded right mid-frontal gyrus with changes consistent with a low-grade tumour. The patient underwent a right-sided craniotomy and resection of the lesion which was confirmed as a WHO grade II diffuse astrocytoma. Postoperatively, the patient reported profound retrograde amnesia for a range of memory components, in particular autobiographical memory and semantic memory. Postoperative imaging showed a good resection margin with no evidence of underlying brain injury. Over an 18-month period, the patient showed no improvement in autobiographical memory; however, significant relearning of semantic knowledge took place and her academic performance was found to be in line with expectations for her age. Conclusion In this report, we discuss a case and review the literature on the role of the right prefrontal cortex in memory and caution on the perception of right prefrontal non-eloquence.

Cerebral localization had several epochs during the nineteenth century. At its dawn the views of Gall had awakened interest not only in the scientific world, but in all the European centers of population. Gall had boldly advanced the idea that the brain was not only subdivided into centers of special function, but that these were indicated on the outside of the head by peculiar prominences and conformations. An essential element of his phrenology was the existence of cranial salients, recognizable by the skilled fingers of the examiner, and constituting the ectal correlatives of ental physiologic centers in the brain substance. The bumps of the phrenologist represented gyres and subgyres, in which resided, as in the compartments of an elaborately arranged house, the habitants of the soul or mind. Gall, who was a worker as well as theorizer, eventually lost himself in mazes of his own creation, but he will at