Normal and unilaterally pyramidotomized dogs were trained to retrieve food from various test devices to allow an estimation of the importance of the pyramidal tract for forelimb movements. The effects of pyramidotomy were relatively weak on movements which to a least extent required use of distal muscles. They were strongest on movements in which wrist flexion and toes flexion and adduction wer...

As most spinal cord injuries (SCIs) are incomplete, an important target for promoting neural repair and recovery of lost motor function is to promote the connections of spared descending spinal pathways with spinal motor circuits. Among the pathways, the corticospinal tract (CST) is most associated with skilled voluntary functions in humans and many animals. CST loss, whether at its origin in t...

After lesions of the developing mammalian CNS, structural plasticity and functional recovery are much more pronounced than in the mature CNS. We investigated the anatomical reorganization of the corticofugal projections rostral to a unilateral lesion of the corticospinal tract at the level of the medullary pyramid (pyramidotomy) and the contribution of this reorganization and other descending s...

Following trauma of the adult brain or spinal cord the injured axons of central neurons fail to regenerate or if intact display only limited anatomical plasticity through sprouting. Adult cortical neurons forming the corticospinal tract (CST) normally have low levels of the neuronal calcium sensor-1 (NCS1) protein. In primary cultured adult cortical neurons, the lentivector-induced overexpressi...

Learning the nervous system has always been a difficult task for undergraduate students. In particular, the complexity of the system and the condensed time available present a difficult challenge. Regardless of audiovisual aids (blackboard, PowerPoint presentations, ready-made models, or CD-ROMs), deep learning is difficult to achieve. Therefore, we developed an active learning component to tea...

A poliomyelitis-like illness after asthma attacks has been found and is called asthmatic amyotrophy (Hopkins' syndrome). All of the previously reported cases were under 13 years of age. Three patients are described who developed acute myelitis after asthma attacks at 15, 22, and 73 years of age. All of them showed acute flaccid monoparesis, and needle EMG disclosed denervation potentials in the...

STUDY DESIGN Various neurophysiological parameters of the motor system were investigated in 43 female patients with Idiopathic Scoliosis (IS) and 31 sex and age matched controls using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). OBJECTIVE To investigate whether asymmetries in excitatory and inhibitory brain processes, as studied by TMS, are a causative factor in IS. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA P...

Myelin is a defining feature of the vertebrate nervous system. Variability in the thickness of the myelin envelope is a structural feature affecting the conduction of neuronal signals. Conversely, the distribution of myelinated tracts along the length of axons has been assumed to be uniform. Here, we traced high-throughput electron microscopy reconstructions of single axons of pyramidal neurons...

Pathologies occupying the interventricular foramen (foramen of Monro - FM) or the anterior part of lateral ventricle (LV) are accessed by the transcortical or transcallosal route. As severing of rostral corpus callosum has been deemed inferior to cortical incision, the approaches through various points of frontal lobe have been developed. Superior (F1), middle (F2) frontal gyrus or occasionally...

BACKGROUND Histopathological studies of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are of end stage disease. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) provides the opportunity to investigate indirectly corticospinal tract pathology of ALS in vivo. METHODS DTI was used to study the water diffusion characteristics of the corticospinal tracts in 21 patients with ALS and 14 normal controls. The authors measured th...