OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of specific brain lesions on prognosis and recovery of post-stroke aphasia, and to assess the characteristic pattern of recovery. METHODS: Total of 15 subjects with first-ever, left hemisphere stroke, who were right handed, and who completed language assessment using the Korean version of the Western Aphasia Battery (K-WAB) at least twice during the subacute and chronic stages of stroke, were included. The brain lesions of the participants were evaluated using MRI-cron, SPM8, and Talairach Daemon software. RESULTS: Subtraction of the lesion overlap map of the participants who showed more than 30% improvement in the aphasia quotient (AQ) by the time of their chronic stage (n=9) from the lesion overlap map of those who did not show more than 30% improvement in the AQ (n=6) revealed a strong relationship with Broca's area, inferior prefrontal gyrus, premotor cortex, and a less strong relationship with Wernicke's area and superior and middle temporal gyri. The culprit lesion related to poor prognosis, after grouping the subjects according to their AQ score in the chronic stage (a cut score of 50), revealed a strong relationship with Broca's area, superior temporal gyrus, and a less strong relationship with Wernicke's area, prefrontal cortex, and inferior frontal gyrus. CONCLUSION: Brain lesions in the Broca's area, inferior prefrontal gyrus, and premotor cortex may be related to slow recovery of aphasia in patients with left hemisphere stroke. Furthermore, involvement of Broca's area and superior temporal gyrus may be associated with poor prognosis of post-stroke aphasia.
Aphasia* ; Brain ; Broca Area ; Hand ; Humans ; Motor Cortex ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Prognosis* ; Stroke* ; Temporal Lobe ; Wernicke Area

OBJECTIVES: Local gyrification reflects the early neural development of cortical connectivity, and is regarded as a potential neural endophenotype in psychiatric disorders. Several studies have suggested altered local gyrification in patients with bipolar I disorder (BD-I). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the alterations in the cortical gyrification of whole brain cortices in patients with BD-I. METHODS: Twenty-two patients with BD-I and age and sex-matched 22 healthy controls (HC) were included in this study. All participants underwent T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The local gyrification index (LGI) of 66 cortical regions were analyzed using the FreeSurfer (Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging). One-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze the difference of LGI values between two groups adjusting for age and sex as covariates. RESULTS: The patients with BD-I showed significant hypogyria in the left pars opercularis (uncorrected-p = 0.049), the left rostral anterior cingulate gyrus (uncorrected-p = 0.012), the left caudal anterior cingulate gyrus (uncorrected-p = 0.033). However, these findings were not significant after applying the multiple comparison correction. Severity or duration of illness were not significantly correlated with LGI in the patients with BD-I. CONCLUSIONS: Our results of lower LGI in the anterior cingulate cortex and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in the BD-I group implicate that altered cortical gyrification in neural circuits involved in emotion-processing may contribute to pathophysiology of BD-I.
Bipolar Disorder ; Brain ; Broca Area ; Endophenotypes ; Gyrus Cinguli ; Humans ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Prefrontal Cortex

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Functional dyspepsia (FD) remains a great clinical challenge since the FD subtypes, defined by Rome III classification, still have heterogeneous pathogenesis. Previous studies have shown notable differences in visceral sensation processing in the CNS in FD compared to healthy subjects (HS). However, the role of CNS in the pathogenesis of each FD subtype has not been recognized. METHODS: Twenty-eight FD patients, including 10 epigastric pain syndrome (EPS), 9 postprandial distress syndrome (PDS), and 9 mixed-type, and 10 HS, were enrolled. All subjects underwent a proximal gastric perfusion water load test and the regional brain activities during resting state and water load test were investigated by functional magnetic resonance imaging. RESULTS: For regional brain activities during the resting state and water load test, each FD subtype was significantly different from HS (P < 0.05). Focusing on EPS and PDS, the regional brain activities of EPS were stronger than PDS in the left paracentral lobule, right inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis, postcentral gyrus, precuneus, insula, parahippocampal gyrus, caudate nucleus, and bilateral cingulate cortices at the resting state (P < 0.05), and stronger than PDS in the left inferior temporal and fusiform gyri during the water load test (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Compared to HS, FD subtypes had different regional brain activities at rest and during water load test, whereby the differences displayed distinct manifestations for each subtype. Compared to PDS, EPS presented more significant differences from HS at rest, suggesting that the abnormality of central visceral pain processing could be one of the main pathogenesis mechanisms for EPS.
Brain ; Broca Area ; Caudate Nucleus ; Classification ; Dyspepsia ; Functional Neuroimaging ; Healthy Volunteers ; Humans ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Parahippocampal Gyrus ; Parietal Lobe ; Perfusion ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Sensation ; Somatosensory Cortex ; Visceral Pain ; Water

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been implicated in the processing of emotionally significant stimuli, particularly the inhibition of inappropriate responses. We examined the role of the mPFC in regulation of fear responses using a differential fear conditioning procedure in which the excitatory conditioned stimulus (CS+) was paired with an aversive footshock and intermixed with the inhibitory conditioned stimulus (CS-). In the first experiment, using rats as subjects, muscimol, a gamma-amino-butyric acid type A (GABAA) receptor agonist, or artificial cerebrospinal fluid (aCSF) was infused intracranially into the mPFC across three conditioning sessions. Twenty-four hours after the last conditioning session, freezing response of the rats was tested in a drug-free state. Neither the muscimol nor the aCSF infusion had any effect on differential responding. In the second experiment, the same experimental procedure was used except that the infusion was made before the testing session rather than the conditioning sessions. The results showed that muscimol infusion impaired differential responding: the level of freezing to CS- was indiscriminable from that to CS+. Taken together, these results suggest that the mPFC is responsible for the regulation of fear response by inhibiting inappropriate fear expressions.
Animals ; Freezing ; Muscimol ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Rats

Diagnosing and managing dementia, presenting with compulsions is challenging. Presented are three cases, a possible representative subset of the Donepezil responders. Selective degeneration of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex networking striatum leading to compulsions would be amenable to cholinergic modulation.
Compulsive Behavior* ; Dementia* ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Psychotic Disorders

Executive Function ; Humans ; Prefrontal Cortex ; physiology

Attention is a phenomenon hard to define, but can be conceptualized as a mental function ranging from sustaining readiness to perceive stimuli to understanding the nature and value and selecting stimuli that are most relevant to the given situation. Manifestations of attention include vigilance, and focused, directed, selective, divided, and sustained attentions. While basic attentional tone is controlled by the interaction among reticular activating system, thalamus, and prefrontal cortex, direction and selection of attention is controlled by neural circuits of prefrontal, posterior parietal, and limbic cortex. It is expected that understanding of attention and its neural could provide answers to the relationship between pathophysiology and clinical symptoms of some major psychiatric disorders. More effort are required to develop tools to assess more detailed and various aspects of attention in Korea.
Attention ; Korea ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Rabeprazole ; Thalamus

Analyzing the influence of mixed emotional factors on false memory through brain function network is helpful to further explore the nature of brain memory. In this study, Deese-Roediger-Mc-Dermott (DRM) paradigm electroencephalogram (EEG) experiment was designed with mixed emotional memory materials, and different kinds of music were used to induce positive, calm and negative emotions of three groups of subjects. For the obtained false memory EEG signals, standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography algorithm (sLORETA) was applied in the source localization, and then the functional network of cerebral cortex was built and analyzed. The results show that the positive group has the most false memories [(83.3 ± 6.8)%], the prefrontal lobe and left temporal lobe are activated, and the degree of activation and the density of brain network are significantly larger than those of the calm group and the negative group. In the calm group, the posterior prefrontal lobe and temporal lobe are activated, and the collectivization degree and the information transmission rate of brain network are larger than those of the positive and negative groups. The negative group has the least false memories [(73.3 ± 2.2)%], and the prefrontal lobe and right temporal lobe are activated. The brain network is the sparsest in the negative group, the degree of centralization is significantly larger than that of the calm group, but the collectivization degree and the information transmission rate of brain network are smaller than the positive group. The results show that the brain is stimulated by positive emotions, so more brain resources are used to memorize and associate words, which increases false memory. The activity of the brain is inhibited by negative emotions, which hinders the brain's memory and association of words and reduces false memory.
Electroencephalography ; Emotions ; Humans ; Memory ; Music ; Prefrontal Cortex

Zona Incerta ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Fear ; Neural Pathways

OBJECTIVES: Empathy has been conceptualized as the ability of emotional resonance and perspective-taking. Emotional awareness has been proposed as the basis of empathy. In this study we examined the relationship between empathy and mood awareness and their neural correlates in resting-state activity in normal controls and patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: Empathy and mood awareness scale scores were compared between 29 patients with schizophrenia and 21 normal controls by voxel-based t-tests and voxel-based correlation analyses of resting-state 18F-FDG PET images. RESULTS: Empathy and mood labeling scale scores were significantly decreased in schizophrenic patients. Mood monitoring was positively correlated with empathy score in normal controls, but not in schizophrenic patients. In normal controls, empathy was positively correlated with resting-state activities in the intraparietal sulcus and mood monitoring was positively correlated with the temporal pole, frontopolar cortex, inferior temporal gyrus, entorhinal cortex and the subgenual prefrontal cortex resting activities. The orbitofrontal cortex resting activity was positively correlated with mood monitoring-related subgenual prefrontal cortex activity in the normal controls. Patients with schizophrenia showed decreased orbitofrontal resting activity and loss of its correlations with mood monitoring-related regional activities. CONCLUSION: This study showed that alteration in the resting-state activity in schizophrenia may reflect dysfunctional empathy and distorted characteristic of emotional awareness. However, the resting-state activity may not reflect the relationship between emotional awareness and empathy.
Brain* ; Empathy* ; Entorhinal Cortex ; Fluorodeoxyglucose F18 ; Humans ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Schizophrenia*