OBJECTIVE Acquired pendular nystagmus occurs mainly in multiple sclerosis (MS) and focal brainstem lesions. In the later case, it is part of the syndrome of oculopalatal tremor. Even though pathophysiology of acquired pendular nystagmus has been clearly characterized experimentally in both etiologies, there is a persisting ambiguity in clinical literature, which leads one to consider both clini...

IDENTIFICATION AND RETRAINING OF SENSORIMOTOR DEFICITS TO REDUCE INTENTION TREMOR IN MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS Megan Heenan Marquette University, 2015 Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects approximately 1 in 1000 Americans and is a significant cause of disability in the United States. One significant contributor to disability in MS is intention tremor, which manifests as an oscillation about the endpoint of...

BACKGROUND This work evaluates the consistency, effect size and incidence of persistent side effects of lesional neurosurgical interventions in the treatment of tremor due to Parkinson's disease (PD), essential tremor (ET), multiple sclerosis (MS) and midbrain lesions. METHODS Systematic review and meta-analysis according to PRISMA-P guidelines. Random effects meta-analysis of standardised me...

The effects of a muscle twitch on the tremor of the extensor indicis muscle and of the tibial anterior muscle have been recorded in 14 patients with essential tremor and in 10 patients with Parkinson's disease. The muscle twitch evoked by the electrical stimulation of the motor nerve inhibits the tremor and synchronises it. The mean duration of the inhibition is 92.1 +/- 6.8 ms for essential tr...

BACKGROUND Although thalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been established as an effective therapy for refractory tremor in Parkinson's disease and essential tremor, reports investigating the efficacy of posterior subthalamic area (PSA) DBS for severe, debilitating tremors continue to emerge. However, questions regarding the optimal anatomical target, surgical approach, programming paradigm...

INTRODUCTION The ventrolateral (VL) nucleus of the thalamus is the commonly chosen target for deep brain stimulation (DBS) to alleviate tremor. However, it has a poor efficacy in alleviating proximal tremor and patients may develop tolerance to the action component of tremor. We performed bilateral stimulation of the caudal or motor part of the zona incerta nucleus (cZI) to determine its safety...

BACKGROUND One of the frequent symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is tremor which can severely cause disability. Treatment of tremor in MS patients is still very challenging to manage. In this study, we sought to determine the efficacy of Levetiracetam on treatment of MS-related tremor. MATERIALS AND METHODS This clinical trial study was conducted among 22 patients from July 2012 to April 20...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of peripheral sustained cooling on intention tremor in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). MS induced upper limb intention tremor affects many functional activities and is extremely difficult to treat.Materials/ METHODS Deep (18 degrees C) and moderate (25 degrees C) cooling interventions were applied for 15 minutes to 23 and 11 tremor arms of patients w...

OBJECTIVE We conducted intraoperative measurements of tremor during DBS containing short pauses (⩽50 ms) to determine if there is a minimum pause duration that preserves tremor suppression. METHODS Nine subjects with ET and thalamic DBS participated during IPG replacement surgery. Patterns of DBS included regular 130 Hz stimulation interrupted by 0, 15, 25 or 50 ms pauses. The same patterns w...

Using a computer-controlled torque motor and manipulandum, 50 ms torque pulses and 70 second trains of binary pseudorandom torque disturbances were applied to the wrists of 10 adult controls and 22 patients with essential tremor in order to study the interaction between mechanically-induced stretch-reflex oscillations and essential tremor. These two oscillations were separated by applying inert...