Neuroimaging has proved to be both sensitive and highly effective in detecting dopaminergic dysfunc-tion in Parkinsonian Syndromes. It can help establish the truth of the disorder when clinical features are incomplete or contradictory. Now the truth is out. Nycomed Amersham are proud to announce the first and only approved nuclear imaging product in Europe to help differentiate Essential Tremor...

Many neurological and psychiatric disorders are associated with constipation, and this paper is a review of the current clinical knowledge regarding the pathogenesis and clinical findings. We will comment on the location of lesions, the possible pathogenesis of the symptoms, and the treatment of constipation, within a number of different neurological diseases. This field is rapidly expanding, a...

We had observed that parkinsonism, especially without tremor, was frequently unrecognized and, therefore, often not considered when patients were admitted to the hospital after a fall. This led to our interest in the problem of underdiagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and related disorders. Our interest grew further with our work on elderly patients with behavioral problems who were treated w...

The use of functional imaging in neurodegenerative diseases has increased in recent years, with applications in research into the underlying pathophysiology, aiding in diagnosis, or evaluating new treatments. In Parkinson’s disease (PD), these imaging methods have expanded our understanding of the disease beyond dopaminergic deficits. Moreover, functional imaging methods have described alterati...

Sir: In recent years, there have been several case reports of extrapyramidal symptoms as a result of treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). These symptoms include dystonia, akathisia, and parkinsonism. In most previously reported cases, the patients had preexisting brain diseases, but some movement disorders developed after initiation of SSRI treatment in both young hea...

We used a CAPSIT-based questionnaire to estimate the percentage of parkinsonian patients suitable for subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) in a movement disorders clinic. We found that out of 641 consecutive PD patients only 1.6% fulfilled strict STN-DBS criteria. When we applied more flexible criteria, the percentage of eligibility increased to 4.5%. Most patients (60%) were ...

The various reported psychogenic movement disorders (PMDs) include tremor, dystonia, myoclonus, gait disorder, Parkinsonism, tics, and chorea. Although it is not easy to diagnose PMDs, several features such as distractibility, entrainment, suggestion and placebo trial are quite helpful to diagnose. Especially, distractibility or suggestion is a good tool to do in outpatient clinic easily. We de...

Twenty-eight cases of mirror writing were seen during a period of three and a half years. These consisted of 12 patients with essential tremor, nine with Parkinson's disease, three with spino-cerebellar degeneration and four other cases. There were no cases of hemiparesis, aphasia, apraxia, agnosia or confusion. Fragmentary reversals were excluded from this study. Since essential tremor, Parkin...

This work presents an automatic analysis of Parkinsonian speech prosody in read and spontaneous tasks. We first evaluate the reliability of existing algorithms for the automatic analysis of speech prosody and show that these tools are efficient for the analysis of Parkinsonian speech if a large amount of data is processed. We then investigate the prosodic characteristics of 25 control and 30 Pa...

Background/introduction Combining focused ultrasound (FUS) with real time MRI guidance and monitoring enables a new non-invasive treatment of brain disorders. In this technique multisource ultrasound waves are focused at a single point raising the temperature gradually until ablation occurs. Lesions as small as 2-4 mm can be made, without impact on surrounding tissue or remote brain tissue. Our...