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Introduction: Irradiation is an essential part of therapy for brain malignant tumors that can prolong life for terminally ill patients. However, it causes radiation-induced complications, divided into acute, early delayed and late complications, that all vary on the applied radiation dose. Aim: The aim of this research was to determine the type and frequence of radiation-induced brain changes after irradiation of endocranium, and to determine correlations between the type of the changes, the irradiation dose and the time passed. Material and methods: This retrospective study included 41 patients of both sexes. The study was performed in the Center for Imaging Diagnostics of Oncology Institute of Vojvodina, using the BIRPIS database. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans consisted of: T2 axial, FLAIR axial, T1 pre-contrast axial, SWI, and T1 axial 3D MP-RAGE post-contrast tomograms. Evaluated changes were: cavernoma, angioma, gliosis, aneurysm, hemorrhage, hydrocephalus and other. Methods of descriptive statistics were used for the analysis. Results: The most common change in this study was gliosis (92.68%), followed by cavernoma (53.65%), hydrocephalus (26.83%) and angioma (21.95%). Hemorrhage and aneurysm were not found. Dilated perivascular spaces were found in 80% of the patients; this finding has not yet been described in this group of patients. Conclusion: Dilated perivascular spaces represent frequent post-irradiation sequelae in the white matter of the brain in treated patients, just after gliotic changes, that are the most frequent complication. Further studies are needed to explain the pathophysiologic mechanism of these changes.

This study aimed to determine the instruction that maximizes fencing attack performance and to explore the sensitivity of a novel efficiency index (EI) that considers reaction time, attack velocity, and absolute error to discriminate between beginners and experienced fencers. Instructions that directed attentional focus internally (react as fast as possible and perform the attack movement as fast as possible) or externally (be as accurate as possible) were provided prior to stimulus presentation. The EI did not differ between the instructions in any group (p > .05), the instructions "react as fast as possible" and "be as accurate as possible" promoted in beginners the highest and the lowest EI, and the EI was higher for fencers. Our findings suggest that the EI could be recommended as a general index of fencing attack efficiency.

This study aimed (I) to investigate the impact of the number of stimulus-responses alternatives on reaction time (RT) under quasi-realistic fencing situations, and (II) to elucidate whether the regression slope based on the RT and the number of stimulus-responses alternatives could distinguish between beginners and experienced fencers. Ten beginners (7 men) and 10 experienced (6 men) fencers participated in the study. A video-based method was used to present four typical fencing movement techniques (i.e. "stimulus") after which the participants had to perform an offensive (high or low attack) or defensive (high or low defence) action (i.e. "response"). The simple-RT (specific stimulus known in advance), 2Choice-RT (only defensive or offensive stimuli), and 4Choice-RT (all possible stimuli) were evaluated. The increase in the number of stimulus-responses alternatives was associated with higher RT (4Choice-RT > 2Choice-RT > Simple-RT; p  < 0.05). Beginners always presented higher RT compared to fencers (range: 25.5-34.8%; p  < 0.05) and also showed a steeper slope of the relationship between RT and the number of stimulus-responses alternatives (range: 35.2-55.2%; p  < 0.05). These results suggest that the capability to quickly respond to specific fencing stimuli increases with training experience, being the differences accentuated with increasing number of stimulus-responses alternatives.