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Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the impact of an 8-week physical training program on physiological, biological and psychological profiles in individual with mood disorders.Metho...

Une activité d’expression musicale est offerte au Centre de réadaptation Lucie-Bruneau (CRLB) pour les personnes atteintes de sclérose en plaques et leurs proches. Cette activité utilise les qualités créatives et émotives de la musique pour faciliter le contact et la prise de conscience du potentiel personnel chez les personnes impliquées. L’activité vise à sensibiliser la famille aux nombreux changements bio-psycho-sociaux en lien avec la sclérose en plaques et à améliorer l’extériorisation authentique des sentiments et des besoins des participants. Enfin, l’atelier a pour objectif de faciliter l’émergence de stratégies d’action pour réagir face à la maladie. Après une courte présentation de la clientèle, de l’établissement et de l’activité, les auteurs tentent de tracer les grandes lignes des enjeux psychosociaux d’une telle offre de services., A musical expression activity is offered at the Centre de réadaptation Lucie-Bruneau (CRLB) for people with multiple sclerosis and their loved ones. This activity uses the creative and emotional qualities of music to facilitate contact and develop an awareness of personal potential for those involved. The activity is intended to make the family aware of the many bio-psycho-social changes that occur as a result of multiple sclerosis and improve the authentic expression of the participants’ feelings and needs. Finally, the objective of the workshop is to facilitate the emergence of action strategies for reacting to the disease. After a brief presentation of the clientele, the facility and the activity, the authors attempt to provide a summary of the major psycho-social issues of offering such a service.

Olfactory functions are not systematically evaluated following traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study aimed at comparing two smell tests that are used in a clinical setting.The University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) and the Alberta Smell Test were compared in terms of assessment time, cost and diagnosis. Parameters associated with olfactory loss such as injury severity, type of cerebral lesion and depressive data were considered. Forty-nine TBI patients admitted to an outpatient rehabilitation programme took part in this experiment.The scores of the two smell tests were significantly correlated. Both tests indicated that patients with frontal lesion performed significantly worse than patients with other types of lesion. Mood and injury severity were not associated with olfactory impairment when age was taken into account. Between 40-44% of the patients showing olfactory impairments were not aware of their deficit.Since a significant proportion of the patients showing olfactory impairments were not aware of their deficit, it is recommended than clinicians systematically evaluate olfactory functions using the Alberta Smell test. To refine their diagnosis, the UPSIT can also be used.

Using PET, we investigated the neural substrates of stereodepth perception in humans. The presentation of Julesz-type random-dot stereograms (RDS) produced significant rCBF elevations in Brodmann areas (BA) 18, 19 and 7, all in the right hemisphere. Activation foci were also found in both middle temporal areas (MT). These results demonstrate that, as in primates, cortical area MT and extrastriate areas are central to stereovision and that a network of predominant right hemispheric regions is recruited to meet visuo-spatial processing demands associated with horizontal binocular disparity inputs.

The relative ineffectiveness of hematopoietic stem cells in reaching the bone marrow upon transplantation combined with the limited number of these cells available is a major reason for graft failure and delayed hematopoietic recovery. Hence, the development of strategies that could enhance homing is of high interest. Here, we provide evidence that homing is severely impaired postexposure to ionizing radiation (IR) in mice, an effect we found was time dependent and could be partially rescued using mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) therapy. In an attempt to further increase homing, we took advantage of our observation that the granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF), a cytokine known to induce cell mobilization, is increased in the marrow of mice shortly after their exposure to IR. As such, we developed a truncated, yet functional, soluble G-CSF receptor (solG-CSFR), which we hypothesized could act as a decoy and foster homing. Using MSCs or conditioned media as delivery vehicles, we show that an engineered solG-CSFR has the potential to increase homing and hematopoietic reconstitution in mice. Altogether, our results provide novel findings at the interplay of IR and stromal cell therapy and present the regulation of endogenous G-CSF as an innovative proof-of-concept strategy to manipulate hematopoietic cell homing.

Alterations of the BM microenvironment have been shown to occur after chemoradiotherapy, during aging, and after genetic manipulations of telomere length. Nevertheless, whether BM stromal cells adopt senescent features in response to these events is unknown. In the present study, we provide evidence that exposure to ionizing radiation (IR) leads murine stromal BM cells to express senescence markers, namely senescence-associated β-galactosidase and increased p16INK4a/p19ARF expression. Long (8 weeks) after exposure of mice to IR, we observed a reduction in the number of stromal cells derived from BM aspirates, an effect that we found to be absent in irradiated Ink4a/arf-knockout mice and to be mostly independent of the CFU potential of the stroma. Such a reduction in the number of BM stromal cells was specific, because stromal cells isolated from collagenase-treated bones were not reduced after IR. Surprisingly, we found that exposure to IR leads to a cellular nonautonomous and Ink4a/arf-dependent effect on lymphopoiesis. Overall, our results reveal the distinct sensitivity of BM stromal cell populations to IR and suggest that long-term residual damage to the BM microenvironment can influence hematopoiesis in an Ink4a/arf-dependent manner.

In 2007, an H3N2 influenza A virus was isolated from Canadian mink. This virus was found to be phylogenetically related to a triple reassortant influenza virus which emerged in Canadian swine in 2005, but it is antigenically distinct. The transmission of the virus from swine to mink seems to have occurred following the feeding of animals with a ration composed of uncooked meat by-products of swine obtained from slaughterhouse facilities. Serological analyses suggest that the mink influenza virus does not circulate in the swine population. Presently, the prevalence of influenza virus in Canadian farmed and wild mink populations is unknown. The natural occurrence of influenza virus infection in mink with the presence of clinical signs is a rare event that deserves to be reported.

Udgivelsesdato: 2004-Dec BACKGROUND: Studies of the amnesic syndrome have indicated that telencephalic and diencephalic structures are critical components of the memory system. The exact role of the mammillary bodies (MBs) in human memory remains elusive, since few cases of selective MB damage have been reported. OBJECTIVE: To study a case of severe anterograde amnesia due to a third-ventricle craniopharyngioma with severe MB compression. DESIGN: Case report. SETTING: Neurosurgery clinic of an academic hospital. PATIENT: A 53-year old woman who developed severe anterograde amnesia due to a third-ventricle craniopharyngioma strongly compressing the MBs and, to a lesser extent, the right hippocampus. INTERVENTIONS: Surgical excision of the tumor and neuropsychological testing and positron emission tomography during an associative memory test before and 2 months after tumor removal. A postsurgical magnetic resonance image did not show evidence of damage to the hypothalamus, thalamus, hippocampus, or MBs. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Changes in brain imaging data and results of neuropsychological testing. RESULTS: After tumor removal, the patient showed a complete recovery of memory functions. Performance on the associative memory test was at chance level before surgery and dramatically improved postoperatively. Results of the preoperative positron emission tomographic study showed no activity in memory-related structures. In contrast, a significant blood flow increase occurred in the anterior thalamic nuclei postoperatively. CONCLUSIONS: These behavioral and brain imaging data stress the importance of the MBs in this patient's amnesia. Our data further suggest that the clinical prognosis of decompressing the mammillothalamic tract is excellent, even in cases of massive compression.

We investigated the neural substrates of a recent model of human stereodepth perception by obtaining measurements of regional cerebral blood £ow (rCBF) using PET. Subjects experienced the perceptual properties of stereopsis by viewing rival-luminance stereograms displaying an identical random-dot pattern in their central portion while the backgrounds exhibited correspondent dots contrasting in black/white luminance.The stereoscopic vision induced by retinal luminance rivalry coincided with a signi¢cant elevation of rCBF in the dorsal visual pathway. Area V5 (MT) was activated bilaterally by the experimental condition while the remaining active loci were restricted to the right hemisphere.The neural sites that responded to this novel stereoscopic stimulus are similar to those activated by traditional stereograms containing horizontal disparities. NeuroReport 14:1163^1166 � c 2003 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Destruction of the striate cortex has traditionally been thought to lead to permanent blindness in the contralateral visual field and to the dogma that this region is indispensable for vision in primates. For over 25 years now, evidence has been accumulating that hemianopic human subjects and monkeys possess wide-ranging residual visual capacities or 'blindsight' in the blind part of their visual field. For some researchers, isolated islands of the striate cortex have been associated with patches of degraded vision and made responsible for blindisight. Artefacts such as light scatter, criterion effects, macular sparing, eccentric fixation and minute eye movements have also been linked with the residual vision. For others, the fact that certain aspects of the visual information can be processed without the geniculostriate pathway suggests mediation by the visual subsystems such as extrastriate visual cortical areas which receive visual information via subcortical pathways, that escaped the cortical damage. Subjects who have had a whole cerebral hemisphere removed or disconnected (for the treatment of uncontrollable epilepsy) and who show residual vision in their blind field offer a remarkable opportunity to help clear the controversy regarding the neural substrate of blindsight. Because it is certain that no functional striate or extrastriate cortex remains on the ablated side, these subjects have contributed significantly to identifying the critical pathways involved in blindsight.