Academic literature on the topic 'Projection-specific lesion'

Sacroiliac joint (SIJ) dysfunction is a cause of low back pain in 10–30% of cases. In 1993, the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defined the following set of diagnostic criteria necessary to diagnose SIJ dysfunction: 1) the presence of pain in the areas characteristic of SIJ lesions, with special attention to pain in the Fortin area projection, with possible different types of radiation; 2) positive pain provocation tests for a SIJ lesion; 3) reduced pain after intra-articular anesthetic injection; 4) the lack of a specific nature of the lesion (fracture, inflammation, tumor, etc.). Injection of 0.5–2.5 ml of solution of an anesthetic (bupivacaine, lidocaine) and 20–40 mg of triamcinolone or 5 mg of betamethasone (1 ml) into the SIJ area is used as interventional technologies. More prolonged analgesia involves radiofrequency denervation (RFD) of the SIJ, in which needles with electrodes are placed in the projection of the nerves that innervate the SIJ, and their local thermal destruction is performed. The effectiveness of RFD of SIJ requires further investigation.

To assess if a specific lesion pattern or changes of the basal limbic system as seen in primary depression and depression associated with neurodegenerative disorders might be identified in depressive multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, we submitted 78 MS patients to a MRI examination consisting of a quantitative measurement of lesions and of hyperintense signals from the pontomesencephalic midline (raphe). Furthermore relaxometry of the pontomesencephalic midline, a transcranial ultrasound examination rating its echogenicity semiquantitatively and a standardized neurological, neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological assessment were obtained. Thirty-one patients fulfilled the DSM-IV criteria for depression. Depressed MS patients had a significantly larger temporal lesion load than non-depressed MS patients, especially on the right side. A trend of difference was detected for lesions of the right parietal lobe, the right frontal lobe, the cerebellum and the total lesion load. Neither hyperintense signals or relaxometry nor echogenicity of the region at the level of the pontomesencephalic midline were significantly different between the groups. We conclude that depression in MS patients is not associated with an alteration of the basal limbic system at the brainstem as seen in Parkinson's disease or unipolar depression but with an increased lesion load of the projection areas of the basal limbic system.

Axon regeneration can be induced across anatomically complete spinal cord injury (SCI), but robust functional restoration has been elusive. Whether restoring neurological functions requires directed regeneration of axons from specific neuronal subpopulations to their natural target regions remains unclear. To address this question, we applied projection-specific and comparative single-nucleus RNA sequencing to identify neuronal subpopulations that restore walking after incomplete SCI. We show that chemoattracting and guiding the transected axons of these neurons to their natural target region led to substantial recovery of walking after complete SCI in mice, whereas regeneration of axons simply across the lesion had no effect. Thus, reestablishing the natural projections of characterized neurons forms an essential part of axon regeneration strategies aimed at restoring lost neurological functions.

The ability of 17 cats to discriminate floor temperatures 2–4°C below the ambient temperature was tested before and after unilateral electrolytic thalamic lesions. The lesions were made contralateral to the paws showing better performance in the temperature discrimination task. They were aimed at one or more of the three main target areas of thermoreceptive-specific lamina I spinothalamic neurons [i.e., the nucleus submedius, the dorsomedial aspect of the ventral posterior medial nucleus, and the ventral aspect of the basal ventral medial nucleus (vVMb)], following microelectrode mapping of somatosensory thalamus. The thermosensory consequences of each lesion were measured in postoperative testing, beginning 6–8 days after the final preoperative test session. A mild but definite thermosensory deficiency was found in five cats, in which the response behavior on the contralateral side was reduced below the 69% criterion level for several sessions. Histological analysis indicated that these cats differed only by the inclusion in the lesion of all or part of vVMb. Consequently this area appears to be important for cats’ thermosensory behavior. Nevertheless even large lesions of virtually all of the thermoreceptive lamina I spinothalamic projection areas produced only this mild thermosensory deficit in stark contrast with the massive defect observed previously after spinal lesions of the middle of the lateral funiculus, where lamina I axons ascend. Accordingly such spinal lesions were added at the C4 level, on the same side as the thalamic lesions, in six cats 3 mo after the thalamic surgery. These lesions caused severe contralateral defects (i.e., chance level performance). Thus the present findings are taken to indicate that contralateral ascending projections to vVMb in the thalamus participate in cats’ thermosensory discrimination but that ascending projections to the brain stem must play an important role in their behavioral thermosensitivity.

During cerebral cortical development, ingrowing axons from different thalamic nuclei select and invade their cortical targets. The selection of an appropriate target is first evident even before thalamic axons grow into the cortical plate: initially axons accumulate and wait below their cortical target area in a zone called the subplate. This zone also contains the first postmitotic neurons of the cerebral cortex, the subplate neurons. Here we have investigated whether subplate neurons are involved in the process of target selection by thalamic axons by ablating them from specific cortical regions at the onset of the waiting period and examining the subsequent thalamocortical axon projection patterns. Subplate neurons were ablated at the onset of the waiting period by intracortical injections of kainic acid. The effect of the ablation on the thalamocortical projection from visual thalamus was examined by DiI-labeling of the LGN days to weeks following the lesion. At two to four weeks post-lesion, times when LGN axons would have normally invaded the cortical plate, the axons remained below the cortical plate and grew past their appropriate cortical target in an anomalous pathway. Moreover, examination of LGN axons at one week post-lesion, a time when they would normally be waiting and branching within the visual subplate, indicated that the axons had already grown past their correct destination. These observations suggest that visual subplate neurons are involved in the process by which LGN axons select and subsequently grow into visual cortex. In contrast, subplate neurons do not appear to play a major role in the initial morphological development of the LGN itself. Subplate ablations did not alter dendritic growth or shapes of LGN projection neurons during the period under study, nor did it prevent the segregation of retinal ganglion cell axons into eye-specific layers. However, the overall size of the LGN was reduced, suggesting that there may be increased cell death of LGN neurons in the absence of subplate neurons. To examine whether subplate neurons beneath other neocortical areas play a similar role in the formation of thalamocortical connections, subplate neurons were deleted beneath auditory cortex at the onset of the waiting period for auditory thalamic axons. Subsequent DiI labeling revealed that in these animals the majority of MGN axons had grown past auditory cortex instead of innervating it. Taken together these observations underscore a general requirement for subplate neurons throughout neocortex in the process of cortical target selection and ingrowth by thalamic axons.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

We present the resolution of a case of a 50-year-old patient who presented for excision and reconstruction of a malignant skin lesion at the auricular tubercle of the right helix. The patient reported great concern for the aesthetic outcome. The auricular helix has a unique projection, relief, consistency, and size determined by the contralateral side. Its reconstruction is a surgical challenge and requires sophisticated techniques to achieve good results. Therefore, in cases where we are looking for precision and predictability, 3D technology is a great help for the surgeon as it allows pre-surgical patient-specific planning and the printing of sterilisable models that serve as surgical 3D guides. This case was solved with a two-stage reconstruction. First, the lesion was excised, and a retro auricular advancement flap was placed. In the second stage, the placement of cartilage was sectioned using a customised surgical model obtained from the scanning of the contralateral ear surface. This way, the cartilage donor area was optimised, choosing the most similar shape and size with great precision.

Background The explosive growth of computer tomography (CT) has led to a growing public health concern about patient and population radiation dose. A recently introduced technique for dose reduction, which can be combined with tube-current modulation, over-beam reduction, and organ-specific dose reduction, is iterative reconstruction (IR). Purpose To evaluate the quality, at different radiation dose levels, of three reconstruction algorithms for diagnostics of patients with proven liver metastases under tumor follow-up. Material and Methods A total of 40 thorax–abdomen–pelvis CT examinations acquired from 20 patients in a tumor follow-up were included. All patients were imaged using the standard-dose and a specific low-dose CT protocol. Reconstructed slices were generated by using three different reconstruction algorithms: a classical filtered back projection (FBP); a first-generation iterative noise-reduction algorithm (iDose4); and a next generation model-based IR algorithm (IMR). Results The overall detection of liver lesions tended to be higher with the IMR algorithm than with FBP or iDose4. The IMR dataset at standard dose yielded the highest overall detectability, while the low-dose FBP dataset showed the lowest detectability. For the low-dose protocols, a significantly improved detectability of the liver lesion can be reported compared to FBP or iDose4 ( P = 0.01). The radiation dose decreased by an approximate factor of 5 between the standard-dose and the low-dose protocol. Conclusion The latest generation of IR algorithms significantly improved the diagnostic image quality and provided virtually noise-free images for ultra-low-dose CT imaging.

Age-related macular degeneration is a visual disorder caused by abnormalities in a part of the eye’s retina and is a leading source of blindness. The correct detection, precise location, classification, and diagnosis of choroidal neovascularization (CNV) may be challenging if the lesion is small or if Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) images are degraded by projection and motion. This paper aims to develop an automated quantification and classification system for CNV in neovascular age-related macular degeneration using OCT angiography images. OCT angiography is a non-invasive imaging tool that visualizes retinal and choroidal physiological and pathological vascularization. The presented system is based on new retinal layers in the OCT image-specific macular diseases feature extractor, including Multi-Size Kernels ξcho-Weighted Median Patterns (MSKξMP). Computer simulations show that the proposed method: (i) outperforms current state-of-the-art methods, including deep learning techniques; and (ii) achieves an overall accuracy of 99% using ten-fold cross-validation on the Duke University dataset and over 96% on the noisy Noor Eye Hospital dataset. In addition, MSKξMP performs well in binary eye disease classifications and is more accurate than recent works in image texture descriptors.

Objective: For real-time markerless tumour tracking in stereotactic lung radiotherapy, we propose a different approach which uses patient-specific deep learning (DL) using a personalised data generation strategy, avoiding the need for collection of a large patient data set. We validated our strategy with digital phantom simulation and epoxy phantom studies. Methods: We developed lung tumour tracking for radiotherapy using a convolutional neural network trained for each phantom’s lesion by using multiple digitally reconstructed radiographs (DRRs) generated from each phantom’s treatment planning four-dimensional CT. We trained tumour-bone differentiation using large numbers of training DRRs generated with various projection geometries to simulate tumour motion. We solved the problem of using DRRs for training and X-ray images for tracking using the training DRRs with random contrast transformation and random noise addition. Results: We defined adequate tracking accuracy as the percentage frames satisfying <1 mm tracking error of the isocentre. In the simulation study, we achieved 100% tracking accuracy in 3 cm spherical and 1.5×2.25×3 cm ovoid masses. In the phantom study, we achieved 100 and 94.7% tracking accuracy in 3 cm and 2 cm spherical masses, respectively. This required 32.5 ms/frame (30.8 fps) real-time processing. Conclusions: We proved the potential feasibility of a real-time markerless tumour tracking framework for stereotactic lung radiotherapy based on patient-specific DL with personalised data generation with digital phantom and epoxy phantom studies. Advances in knowledge: Using DL with personalised data generation is an efficient strategy for real-time lung tumour tracking.

Le noyau tegmental rostromédian (RMTg) est une structure cérébrale projetant l’aire tegmentale ventrale (VTA) et l’hypothalamus latéral (LH), centres régulateurs de la prise alimentaire. Le RMTg est encore peu étudié et il est envisageable qu’il participe à la dérégulation de la prise alimentaire observée dans l’obésité et l’hyperphagie boulimique. Nous avons d’abord étudié le rôle des voies RMTg-VTA et RMTg-LH dans la régulation de la prise alimentaire chez le rat grâce à une approche innovante de lésion projections-spécifiques, suivie d’une exposition à un régime obésogène (modèle d’obésité). Nous avons ensuite étudié les adaptations du système endocannabinoïde (ECS) dans les régions du circuit de la récompense dans des modèles d'obésité et d'hyperphagie boulimique. La voie RMTg-VTA et RMTg-LH module respectivement la consommation d’aliments gras et standard. L'analyse moléculaire a révélé une dérégulation distincte de l’expression de l’ECS dans les modèles d’obésité et d’hyperphagie boulimique, notamment au sein du RMTg. Ces résultats soulignent le rôle du RMTg et de l’ECS dans les pathologies associées à une dérégulation de la prise alimentaire
The rostromedial tegmental nucleus (RMTg) is a brain structure projecting to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the lateral hypothalamus (LH), two key regulatory centers for feeding behavior. The function of the RMTg remains mostly unknown, and it is plausible that this region plays a role in food intake dysregulation as observed in obesity and binge-eating disorders. We firstly studied the role of the RMTg-VTA and RMTg-LH pathways in food intake regulation through a projection-specific lesional approach followed by a 6-week exposure to an obesogenic diet. Then, we analyzed and compared the adaptations of the endocannabinoid system (ECS), an endogenous system regulating food intake, within reward-related brain regions in obesity and binge-eating disorder models. Our results indicate that the RMTg-VTA and RMTg-LH pathways respectively modulate high-fat and standard food consumption. The molecular analysis revealed distinct dysregulation of ECS expression in obesity and binge-eating disorder, particularly within the RMTg. These findings underscore the involvement of the RMTg and the ECS in pathologies characterized by dysregulated food intake

Abstract Evidence from many different laboratories using a variety of experimental techniques and animal species indicates that the amygdala plays a crucial role in conditioned fear, anxiety, and attention. Many amygdaloid projection areas are critically involved in specific signs used to measure fear and anxiety. Electrical stimulation of the amygdala elicits a pattern of behaviours that mimic natural or conditioned fear. Lesions of the amygdala block innate or conditioned fear, as well as various measures of attention, and local infusion of drugs into the amygdala have anxiolytic or anti-stress effects in several behavioural tests. N-MethylD-aspartate (NMDA) receptors in the amygdala are important in the acquisition of conditioned fear, whereas NMDA or non-NMDA receptors are important for the expression of conditioned fear. The peptide, corticotropin-releasing hormone, appears to be especially important in fear or anxiety and may act within the amygdala, or parts of the extended amygdala, to orchestrate parts of the fear reaction.

The article presents a pedagogical model, functional in the virtual moodle training environment, for experimenting online coaching in teaching practice. The construction of this e-pedagogical model is based on the needs analysis. The study presents the specific online coaching activities projected for optimizing teaching practice activities and highlights the formative aspects of the application of this pedagogical model. The purpose and objectives of this study circumscribe to the following finalities: e-learning support for the students in the teaching practice probationary stage, experimenting the teaching act for the first time, students’ training in exploring online resources, activities, instruments and services created especially for them and for successful teaching, the dynamic participation of students in the virtual discussions on the Moodle platform (www.moodle.ro), focused on case studies taken from their teaching practice, the analysis of video registrations from teaching practice and the analysis of specific tasks to be performed for the practical activities. Those mediating and intermediating going through such experiences are resourceful persons holding teaching practice trainer capacities and have the professional experience necessary to the development of the knowledge, capacities, abilities of students to obtain excellent results in performing certain tasks specific to the didactical profession. The facilitators projected a precise agenda for the virtual guidance of the teaching practice. The online content was projected by reference to large interest subjects for the students at their first teaching practice experience, but also to the set of didactical competences targeted through the exercise of the professional behavior: filling in the assistance sheet for demonstrative classes, the application of techniques related to the operationalization of some lessons objectives, the selection of an efficient didactical strategy for a class, the projection of a training sequence, the projection of an application or of a pedagogical test, the integral project of a specialty lesson, the formative evaluation and the performance of self-evaluation. The communication among the students in the collaborative learning virtual environment but also between students and trainers/tutors is made at the level of the online system proposed by means of the interactive instruments such as chat-room, forum, instant messaging, blog. The students’ impressions and opinions on the teaching practice activity in application schools are stored in an online journal of reflection on teaching practice. Subsequently, they were analyzed and interpreted. Also, tutors configured an activity report according to three main indicators: 1) the analysis of the involvement degree of the students participating in such virtual course, 2) the analysis of the correctness of solving the proposed themes and 3) the analysis of self-assessments. The article presents the preliminary results of experimenting the online coaching platform in teaching practice by 53 users (50 practitioner students at the University of Pitesti in the IIIrd year of psycho-pedagogical studies and two teaching practice tutors/coordinators in the University of Pitesti and one supervisor in the Gh.Asachi Technical University of Iasi). The methodology observes the structure of a qualitative research. Also, authors are interested in direct feedback and integrated in the platform the online interview for experts having the role of analyzing the opinion of education science experts on the utility of the offered model. The authors highlight, based on the obtained results, the advantages and limits in implementing the online coaching pedagogical model during the first teaching practice probationary stage and offer the premises for continuing the research also during the second stage through re-conceptualizing and optimizing the projected model.

The accelerated development of technology in recent years, coupled with lower prices for electronic components and easy access to information via the Internet, has led to the emergence of computer-aided devices/interfaces that can be used in various fields and implicitly in sports. In this context, the purpose of the paper is to highlight the effects of using the Microsoft Kinect 360 device in order to increase the efficiency of specific training in the handball game. Microsoft Kinect 360 is a versatile multimedia device that can be used as a 3D scanner that provides a variety of functions. In our application, we have exploited the space perception capability of the Kinect sensor that is placed in front of a wall on which the image of the game is also projected; the sensor is mounted and calibrated so as to fully display the projection image; the calibration is done using the LKB program; the LKB system (Linguistic Knowledge Builder) is a grammar and lexicon development environment for unification-based linguistic formalisms. The software part is specifically designed for the training of handball players. The paper presents handball-specific virtual games applied to a group of 22 female players born in 2005/2006, members of the ACS Sporting Ghimbav team. The virtual games applied in the training lessons are aimed at the practice of handball-specific technical elements in an entertaining environment, on an interactive wall, in order to educate the subjects' specialised perceptions. The conclusions of the study highlight useful information on the way of improving the sports training of female players aged 12 to 15 years.