Personality styles in patients with fibromyalgia,major depression and healthy controls

Background  

The fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is suggested to be a manifestation of depression or affective spectrum disorder. We measured the cognitive style of patients with FMS to assess personality styles in 44 patients with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) by comparing them with 43 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 41 healthy controls (HC).     

A non-radioactive receptor assay for snake venom postsynaptic neurotoxins

A non-radioactive assay was developed for detecting the binding of postsynaptic neurotoxins to acetylcholine receptor (AchR) from Torpedo californica. Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) wells coated with long or short chain neurotoxins specifically bound to purified AchR while crotamine or two different cardiotoxins did not. Bound receptor was detected by antibody against AchR. Specificity was determined by dose-response experiments and competition studies using carbamylcholine chloride, acetylcholine chloride, or Naja naja atra cobrotoxin mixed with receptor.     

Alternative brain organization after prenatal cerebral injury: convergent fMRI and cognitive data.

The current study presents both longitudinal behavioral data and functional activation data documenting the effects of early focal brain injury on the development of spatial analytic processing in two children, one with prenatal left hemisphere (LH) injury and one with right hemisphere (RH) injury. A substantial body of evidence has shown that adults and children with early, lateralized brain injury show evidence of spatial analytic deficits. LH injury compromises the ability to encode the parts of a spatial pattern, while RH injury impairs pattern integration. The two children described in this report show patterns of deficit consistent with the site of their injury. In the current study, their longitudinal behavioral data spanning the age range from preschool to adolescence are presented in conjunction with data from a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of spatial processing. The activation results provide evidence that alternative profiles of neural organization can arise following early focal brain injury, and document where in the brain spatial functions are carried out when regions that normally mediate them are damaged. In addition, the coupling of the activation with the behavioral data allows us to go beyond the simple mapping of functional sites, to ask questions about how those sites may have come to mediate the spatial functions.