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Coil embolization is an effective and safe procedure for the treatment of intracranial aneurysms. It is known to produce good clinical outcomes and provide sufficient protec- tion against recurrent bleeding [1-4]. In a systematic review, Brilstra et al. retrieved 19 (1.4%) re-bleeding episodes, 36 (2.6%) aneurysmal ruptures, 124 (9%) ischemic and 55 (4%) permanent complications in 1383 patients with ruptured and unruptured aneurysms treated with coil embolization. Complications occurring during coil embolization include rupture of aneurysm, arterial dissection, bleeding and microembolic complications. Coil dislocation is another rare complication of coil embolization which occurs in 2-6% of the procedures [3,5-7]. Thromboembolic complications during endovascular treatment could be caused by coil dislocation or thrombus formation in parent vessel because of vasospasm [2]. Dislocation can be fixed by retrieval of the coil from the aneurysm or placement of the coil back in the aneurysm [3,8]. Retrieval of a dislocated coil can be achieved by snares and stent retrievers. We present herein a case where Solitaire® stent (Ev3, Irvine, CA, USA) was used for retrieval of a dislocated coil, which protruded into the proximal part of the internal carotid artery (ICA) during endovascular treatment and secondly for total aneurysm treatment by stent-assisted coiling technique in the same patient.

BACKGROUND: For many years, biofeedback and neurofeedback have been implemented in the treatment of depression. However, the effectiveness of these techniques on depressive symptomatology is still controversial. Hence, we conducted a meta-analysis of studies extracted from PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Embase. METHODS: Two different strings were considered for each of the two objectives of the study: A first group comprising studies patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and a second group including studies targeting depressive symptomatology reduction in other mental or medical conditions. RESULTS: In the first group of studies including patients with MDD, the within-group analyses yielded an effect size of Hedges' g = 0.717, while the between-group analysis an effect size of Hedges' g = 1.050. Moderator analyses indicate that treatment efficacy is only significant when accounting for experimental design, in favor of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in comparison to non RCTs, whereas the type of neurofeedback, trial design, year of publication, number of sessions, age, sex and quality of study did not influence treatment efficacy. In the second group of studies, a small but significant effect between groups was found (Hedges' g = 0.303) in favor of bio- and neurofeedback against control groups. Moderator analyses revealed that treatment efficacy was not moderated by any of the sociodemographic and clinical variables. CONCLUSIONS: Heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback and neurofeedback are associated with a reduction in self-reported depression. Despite the fact that the field has still a large room for improvement in terms of research quality, the results presented in this study suggests that both modalities may become relevant complementary strategies for the treatment of MDD and depressive symptomatology in the coming years.

De acuerdo con la Fundación Americana del Cerebro, “las enfermedades cerebrales se manifiestan de muy distintas maneras, y reciben diferentes denominaciones”. Efectivamente, las enfermedades del cerebro presentan una alta incidencia en la población, afectando 1 de cada 6 personas En el mundo, lo que supone un gran reto para la sociedad tanto desde un punto de vista socioeconómico como sanitario. El presente trabajo de tesis doctoral se ha centrado en desarrollo de heterociclos para el diagnóstico y tratamiento de enfermedades cerebrales, en particular, Enfermedad de Alzheimer (EA) y glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). EA es una enfermedad neurodegenerativa perteneciente a un grupo de patologías denominadas tauopatías, que se caracterizan por los depósitos anormales de proteína tau en el cerebro, en forma de agregados de la misma, ubicados en el interior de las neuronas y denominados ovillos neurofibrilares. El mayor problema que presenta actualmente EA es su diagnóstico, pues el daño cerebral se produce años antes de la aparición de los primeros síntomas...

This paper analyzes the effects of all-weather rural roads on households' net output prices, education and health in a poor, drought-prone region of India. Of 30 villages originally surveyed in 2001-02, when two had such roads, a further nine received them between January 2007 and December 2009 under the program Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. Cross-section comparisons involving all villages and 'before and after' comparisons in the nine yielded these findings: (i) net output prices were 5 per cent or more higher; (ii) substantially fewer days of schooling were lost due to bad weather, largely because teachers had fewer absences; (iii) the acutely sick received more timely treatment and were more likely to be treated in a hospital than in the nearest primary health clinic; and (iv) the respondents ranked the resulting benefits in the domains of health and education at least as highly as the 'commercial' ones.

The goal of this thesis was to develop a prototype of the Metropolia Signals Box which can measure several different biosignals through their corresponding potential difference between two electrodes. The signals should then be processed, stored and wirelessly transmitted. In general, this box should serve research and educational purposes. As a basis of this application the Cyton biosensing board by OpenBCI was examined. The result was that this board covers nearly all required specifications for the Metropolia Signal Box. It can measure EEG, ECG, EOG and EMG signals, amplify and filter as well as store and transmit them. Additionally, it features an accelerometer. In addition to the features already existing in the OpenBCI GUI, the possibility of temperature measurement was added. For this purpose an already existing part of the GUI was altered, so that it not only reads analog voltage, but converts it directly into the temperature. Two temperature sensors, one providing directly an analog voltage and a NTC thermistor, were used. With the first sensor the temperature can be measured with an accuracy of 1°C, and with the second one it was possible to improve the accuracy to 0.1°C. All relevant hardware parts used in this project are displayed and explained in the thesis.

Wydział Anglistyki Niniejsza dysertacja bada problem neuronalnych korelatów przetwarzania fonologicznego języka ojczystego i języka obcego u polskich użytkowników języka angielskiego. W celu wskazania struktur i funkcji mózgu odpowiedzialnych za przetwarzanie fonologiczne stworzono zestaw eksperymentów, które przeprowadzono na grupie średniozaawansowanych polskich użytkowników języka angielskiego. Korzystając z metody rezonansu magnetycznego sprawdzono hipotezę zakładającą zrózżnicowanie w reprezentacji procesów fonologicznych w mózgu, w zależności od przetwarzanego języka oraz stopnia zaawansowania użytkownika. Zestaw zawierał cztery eksperymenty z zadaniami w języku polskim i angielskim, takimi jak słuchanie pasywne, Test Pamięci Roboczej Sternberga, test fluencji słownej, oraz Test Leksykalny dla Zaawansowanych Uczniów Języka Angielskiego. Na eksperymenty złożyły się również trzy eksperymenty nie oparte na żadnych zadaniach. Wyniki wraz z dokładną dyskusją sugerują model przetwarzania drugiego języka, który składa się z modułów związanych z zadaniami językowymi zbudowanych ze współgrających ze sobą sieci mózgowych. W związku z tym, niniejsza dysertacja wnosi nowe odkrycia do dziedzin językoznawstwa i neuronauki, poszerzając nasze zrozumienie procesów przetwarzania języka w mózgu. The present thesis investigates the issue of neural basis for phonological processing of native and non-native speech in Polish-English bilinguals. In order to pinpoint the structures and functions that are relevant to phonological processing, a set of experiments was devised on a group of moderately proficient Polish-English bilinguals. Using the method of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and hypothesizing that there will be differences in the representation of phonological processes in the brain, dependent on the language and the level of proficiency in the language, four task-based experiments in both Polish and English, including listening to stories, Sternberg Working Memory Task, Verbal Fluency Task, and Lexical Test for Advanced Learners of English, and three task-independent experiments were conducted. The results of the thesis, along with the detailed discussion suggest a model of phonological processing in L2, which consists of different task-related modules of interacting brain networks. As such, the present thesis contributes to both fields of linguistics and neuroscience, broadening the understanding of how the brain processes language.

Multimodal neuroimaging using EEG and fMRI provides deeper insights into brain function by improving the spatial and temporal resolution of the acquired data. However, simultaneous EEG-fMRI inevitably compromises the quality of the EEG and fMRI signals due to the high degree of interaction between the two systems. Fluctuations in the magnetic flux flowing through the participant and the EEG system, whether due to movement within the magnetic field of the scanner or to changes in magnetic field strength, induce electrical potentials in the EEG recordings that mask the much weaker electrical activity of the neuronal populations. A number of different methods have been proposed to reduce MR artifacts. We present an overview of the most commonly used methods and an evaluation of the methods using three sets of diverse EEG data. We limited the evaluation to open-access and easy-to-use methods and a reference signal regression method using a set of six carbon-wire loops (CWL), which allowed evaluation of their added value. The evaluation was performed by comparing EEG signals recorded outside the MRI scanner with artifact-corrected EEG signals recorded simultaneously with fMRI. To quantify and evaluate the quality of artifact reduction methods in terms of the spectral content of the signal, we analyzed changes in oscillatory activity during a resting-state and a finger tapping motor task. The quality of artifact reduction in the time domain was assessed using data collected during a visual stimulation task. In the study we utilized hierarchical Bayesian probabilistic modeling for statistical inference and observed significant differences between the evaluated methods in the success of artifact reduction and associated signal quality in both the frequency and time domains. In particular, the CWL system proved superior to the other methods evaluated in improving spectral contrast in the alpha and beta bands and in recovering visual evoked responses. Based on the results of the evaluation study, we proposed guidelines for selecting the optimal method for MR artifact reduction.

Timing is an essential component of human actions, and is the foundation of any sort of sequential behavior, from picking up a glass to playing an instrument or dancing. Because of this, our understanding of how we represent time in the brain (i.e., the human timing system) critically relies on basic research on simple behaviors. Perception of temporal regularities is central to a wide range of basic actions, but also underpins abilities unique to humans such as the creation of complex musical scores. This dissertation is an in-depth examination of endogenously and exogenously guided timing behavior, and how context is a critical component of understanding rhythmic entrainment in humans. We previously validated “gold standard” functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings on action-based timing behavior using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) (Rahimpour et al., 2020). In particular, we observed significant hemodynamic responses in cortical areas in direct relation to the complexity of the behavior being performed. To do so, we probed multiple levels of contextual influence on action-based timing behavior and patterns of cortical activation as measured using fNIRS. Our findings highlighted several distinct, context-dependent parameters of specific timing behaviors. Here we further interrogate human timing abilities by introducing variations of our original experimental design, observing that subtle contextual variations have a significant impact on the degree of rhythmic entrainment given the presence/absence of metronomic input. We used electroencephalogram (EEG) to further validate our fNIRS findings, demonstrating that single trial neurobiological activity can be used to predict whether behavior is exogenously or endogenously guided. We also found that patterns of neural activity correspond to differential use of the internal timing system, and that specific differences in neural activity correlate with accuracy of action-based timing behavior. These findings emerged from our use of a novel deep learning approach to extract person-specific, neural-based features as predictors of behavioral performance. Finally, we examined whether fNIRS and EEG produced similar localization information, finding that the influence of training factors on cortical localization must be accounted for to make such comparisons.

In 2001, 16.6 million deaths globally were due to cardiovascular diseases (CVD); this figure will increase to 25 million by 2025. The two leading causes of death worldwide are cardiovascular coronary heart disease (which causes heart attack and heart failure) and cerebrovascular disease (which causes stroke). The direct and indirect costs of CVD are high: enormous health care costs and productivity/income losses. Of all global deaths from CVD, 65 percent occur in developing countries. This will increase to 75 percent by 2025. By then, cardiovascular disorders will be the biggest cause of lost disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) worldwide, and the second leading cause of DALY loss in developing countries. In developing countries, cardiovascular diseases predominantly affect people of working age (30-64 years). Death and disability in middle age has major social and economic consequences Prevention or treatment of risk factors for CVD is effective and sustainable in the long run. The risk of CVD can be reduced quickly and substantially with successful preventive practices. This also has a favorable impact on other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that share the same risk factors. Treatment of established CVD is expensive and resource intensive. Unregulated private health systems tend to direct a large proportion of resources to costly cardiovascular technologies available only to the wealthy few.