Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268

I have developed "tennis elbow" from lugging this book around the past four weeks, but it is worth the pain, the effort, and the aspirin. It is also worth the (relatively speaking) bargain price. Including appendixes, this book contains 894 pages of text. The entire panorama of the neural sciences is surveyed and examined, and it is comprehensive in its scope, from genomes to social behaviors. The editors explicitly state that the book is designed as "an introductory text for students of biology, behavior, and medicine," but it is hard to imagine any audience, interested in any fragment of neuroscience at any level of sophistication, that would not enjoy this book. The editors have done a masterful job of weaving together the biologic, the behavioral, and the clinical sciences into a single tapestry in which everyone from the molecular biologist to the practicing psychiatrist can find and appreciate his or

Principles of Neural Science

Deep brain stimulation for treatment-resistant depression.

This document presents the Movement Disorder Society Clinical Diagnostic Criteria for Parkinson's disease (PD). The Movement Disorder Society PD Criteria are intended for use in clinical research but also may be used to guide clinical diagnosis. The benchmark for these criteria is expert clinical diagnosis; the criteria aim to systematize the diagnostic process, to make it reproducible across centers and applicable by clinicians with less expertise in PD diagnosis. Although motor abnormalities remain central, increasing recognition has been given to nonmotor manifestations; these are incorporated into both the current criteria and particularly into separate criteria for prodromal PD. Similar to previous criteria, the Movement Disorder Society PD Criteria retain motor parkinsonism as the core feature of the disease, defined as bradykinesia plus rest tremor or rigidity. Explicit instructions for defining these cardinal features are included. After documentation of parkinsonism, determination of PD as the cause of parkinsonism relies on three categories of diagnostic features: absolute exclusion criteria (which rule out PD), red flags (which must be counterbalanced by additional supportive criteria to allow diagnosis of PD), and supportive criteria (positive features that increase confidence of the PD diagnosis). Two levels of certainty are delineated: clinically established PD (maximizing specificity at the expense of reduced sensitivity) and probable PD (which balances sensitivity and specificity). The Movement Disorder Society criteria retain elements proven valuable in previous criteria and omit aspects that are no longer justified, thereby encapsulating diagnosis according to current knowledge. As understanding of PD expands, the Movement Disorder Society criteria will need continuous revision to accommodate these advances.

/pdf/mds-clinical-diagnostic-criteria-for-parkinson-s-disease-74dzuucoq6.pdf

MDS clinical diagnostic criteria for Parkinson's disease

Objective: To devise a short bedside cognitive and behavioral battery to assess frontal lobe functions. Methods: The designed battery consists of six subtests exploring the following: conceptualization, mental flexibility, motor programming, sensitivity to interference, inhibitory control, and environmental autonomy. It takes approximately 10 minutes to administer. The authors studied 42 normal subjects and 121 patients with various degrees of frontal lobe dysfunction (PD, n = 24; multiple system atrophy, n = 6; corticobasal degeneration, n = 21; progressive supranuclear palsy, n = 47; frontotemporal dementia, n = 23). Results: The Frontal Assessment Battery scores correlated with the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale scores (rho = 0.82, p p p p Conclusion: The Frontal Assessment Battery is easy to administer at bedside and is sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction.

The FAB A frontal assessment battery at bedside

In human, execution of unimanual movements requires lateralized activation of the primary motor cortex, which then transmits the motor command to the contralateral hand through the crossed corticospinal tract (CST). Mutations in NETRIN-1 alter motor control lateralization, leading to congenital mirror movements. To address the role of midline Netrin-1 on CST development and subsequent motor control, we analyzed the morphological and functional consequences of floor-plate Netrin-1 depletion in conditional knock-out mice (Shh::cre;Ntn1lox/lox mice). Here, we show that depletion of floor plate Netrin-1 critically disrupts midline crossing of the CST, whereas the other commissural systems are mostly preserved. The CST defect results in abnormal but functional ipsilateral projections, and is associated with abnormal symmetric movements. Therefore, our study reveals a new role for Netrin-1 in CST development. It also describes a unique mouse model recapitulating characteristics of human congenital mirror movements, through abnormal CST decussation.

/pdf/loss-of-floor-plate-netrin-1-impairs-midline-crossing-of-4ao87z995j.pdf

Loss of floor plate Netrin-1 impairs midline crossing of corticospinal axons and leads to mirror movements

A young man is presented who developed an akinetic-rigid syndrome shortly after a minor illness. Rituals and stereoptypies were prominent. At its most severe he was unable to feed himself. There was no response to L-dopa/cardopa treatment. A course of ECT was followed by a marked improvement in his condition. Attempts to stop ECT for more than a week have led to recurrence of his bradykinesia.

An akinetic-rigid syndrome, depression, and stereotypies in a young man.

Action selection refers to the decision regarding which action to perform in order to reach a desired goal, that is, the "what" component of intention. Whether the action is freely chosen or externally instructed involves different brain networks during the selection phase, but it is assumed that the way an action is selected should not influence the subsequent execution phase of the same movement. Here, we aim to test this hypothesis by investigating whether the modality of movement selection influences the brain networks involved during the execution phase of the movement. Twenty healthy volunteers performed a delayed response task in an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging design to compare freely chosen and instructed unimanual or bimanual movements during the execution phase. Using activation analyses, we found that the pre-supplementary motor area (preSMA) and the parietal and cerebellar areas were more activated during the execution phase of freely chosen as compared to instructed movements. Connectivity analysis showed an increase of information flow between the right posterior parietal cortex and the cerebellum for freely chosen compared to instructed movements. We suggest that the parieto-cerebellar network is particularly engaged during freely chosen movement to monitor the congruence between the intentional content of our actions and their outcome.

https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article-pdf/32/1/216/41270668/bhab204.pdf

Identification of a Brain Network Underlying the Execution of Freely Chosen Movements.

To the Editor: Siva et all recently reported a lack of association of physical trauma with the onset or exacerbation of multiple sclerosis (MS) based on the Mayo Clinic records-linkage system for the population of Rochester and Olmsted County, Minnesota.’ Two cohorts, followed on average more than 10 years, were analyzed: one comprised 819 local patients ages 10 to 50 years with head t rauma (associated with unconsciousness, amnesia, or skull fracture), and the other consisted of 942 patients who underwent surgery for confirmed or suspected disk protrusion of the lumbar spine. In neither cohort was there a significant association of such trauma or surgery with MS. We now report a third cohort of 561 cases of cervical radiculopathy diagnosed in Olmsted County residents from 1976 through 1990 and identified by Radhakrishnan et a13; these cases were collated with both the 225 incidence cases of MS in Olmsted County (1901 to 1991) and the 164 prevalence cases as of December 1, 1991. Only one M S prevalence case matched-a woman with onset of MS at age 19 years who moved to Olmsted County at age 23 and developed symptoms of neck pain and paresthesias a t age 48 that led to the diagnosis of cervical radiculopathy. Thus, using a historical cohort of MS patients in Olmsted County, Minnesota, and collating these cases with three large specified cohorts in the same population (head injury, back surgery, and now cervical radiculopathy), we observed no significant association. These findings are in agreement with the results of the prospective study of Sibley et a l ,4 which also showed no association of MS and physical trauma.

Marie Vidailhet

Papers

Loss of floor plate Netrin-1 impairs midline crossing of corticospinal axons and leads to mirror movements

An akinetic-rigid syndrome, depression, and stereotypies in a young man.

Identification of a Brain Network Underlying the Execution of Freely Chosen Movements.

Down's syndrome and Parkinson's disease

L'encéphalopathie au bismuth n'a pas disparu...