Altered dendritic spines are characteristic of traumatized or diseased brain. Two general categories of spine pathology can be distinguished: pathologies of distribution and pathologies of ultrastructure. Pathologies of spine distribution affect many spines along the dendrites of a neuron and include altered spine numbers, distorted spine shapes, and abnormal loci of spine origin on the neuron....

BACKGROUND Routine imaging of patients with spine-related complaints referred for surgical assessment may represent an inefficient use of technological resources. Our objective was to explore Canadian spine surgeons' requirements with respect to imaging studies accompanying spine-related referrals. METHODS We administered an 8-item survey to all 100 actively practising surgeon members of the ...

Charcot spine, also known as neuropathic spinal arthropathy and Charcot spinal arthropathy, is a rare and potentially devastating consequence of spinal cord injury. The degeneration seen in patients with Charcot spine occurs secondary to the loss of innervation to the spinal facet joints [1]. The most common cause is traumatic spinal cord injury, though syphilitic tabes dorsalis frequently seen...

Let Tn be the Teichmüller space of flat metrics on the n-dimensional torus T and identify SLn Z with the corresponding mapping class group. We prove that the subset Y consisting of those points at which the systoles generate π1(T) is, for n ≥ 5, not contractible. In particular, Y is not a SLn Z-equivariant deformation retract of Tn. For n ≥ 2 let Tn be the Teichmüller space of flat metrics with...

PURPOSE: Ultrasound imaging is an attractive alternative to X-ray for scoliosis diagnosis and monitoring due to its safety and inexpensiveness. The transverse processes as skeletal landmarks are accessible by means of ultrasound and are sufficient for quantifying scoliosis, but do not provide an intuitively comprehendible visualization of the spine. METHODS: We created a method for visualizatio...

Most excitatory synaptic terminals in the brain impinge on dendritic spines. We and others have recently shown that dynamic microtubules (MTs) enter spines from the dendritic shaft. However, a direct role for MTs in long-lasting spine plasticity has yet to be demonstrated and it remains unclear whether MT-spine invasions are directly influenced by synaptic activity. Lasting changes in spine mor...

the objective of this study was to validate the use of bone mineral measurements of the calcaneus bone by dual x-ray and laser (dxl) in a cross-sectional study carried out in an osteoporosis clinic. measurements of bone mineral density (bmd) at proximal femur and spine were obtained by dual-energy photon x-ray absorptiometry (dexa). osteoporosis was defined by a dexa t-score <-2.5 at the femora...

Klippel-Feil syndrome is a condition characterized by fusion of the spine owing to failure normal segmentation cervical structures. In this case report, we aimed describe rare syndrome, show findings using imaging techniques, and demonstrate its clinical importance. A 41-year-old female patient presented our faculty hospital with neck pain. Using magnetic resonance imaging, observed decreased a...

Why is the spine of a neuron so small that it can contain only small numbers of molecules and reactions inevitably become stochastic? We previously showed that, despite such noisy conditions, the spine exhibits robust, sensitive, and efficient features of information transfer using the probability of Ca2+ increase; however, the mechanisms are unknown. In this study, we show that the small volum...

STUDY OBJECTIVE We designed the Canadian C-Spine Rule for the clinical clearance of the cervical spine, without need for diagnostic imaging, in alert and stable trauma patients. Emergency physicians previously validated the Canadian C-Spine Rule in 8,283 patients. This study prospectively evaluates the performance characteristics, reliability, and clinical sensibility of the Canadian C-Spine Ru...