Identification des émotions chez des patients atteints de gliomes de bas grade versus accidents vasculaires cérébraux

Protective effects of Curcuma longa against neurobehavioral and neurochemical damage caused by cerium chloride in mice

Cerium chloride (CeCl₃) is considered an environmental pollutant and a potent neurotoxic agent. Medicinal plants have many bioactive compounds that provide protection against damage caused by such pollutants. Curcuma longa is a bioactive compound-rich plant with very important antioxidant properties. To study the preventive and healing effects of Curcuma longa on cerium-damaged mouse brains, we intraperitoneally injected cerium chloride (CeCl₃, 20 mg/kg BW) along with Curcuma longa extract, administrated by gavage (100 mg/kg BW), into mice for 60 days. We then examined mouse behavior, brain tissue damage, and brain oxidative stress parameters. Our results revealed a significant modification in the behavior of the CeCl₃-treated mice. In addition, CeCl₃ induced a significant increment in lipid peroxidation, carbonyl protein (PCO), and advanced oxidation protein product levels, as well as a significant reduction in superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activities. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity remarkably increased in the brain of CeCl₃-treated mice. Histopathological observations confirmed these results. Curcuma longa attenuated CeCl₃-induced oxidative stress and increased the activities of antioxidant enzymes. It also decreased AChE activity in the CeCl₃-damaged mouse brain that was confirmed by histopathology. In conclusion, this study suggests that Curcuma longa has a neuroprotective effect against CeCl₃-induced damage in the brain.

Compensating for age limits through emotional crossmodal integration

Social interactions in daily life necessitate the integration of social signals from different sensory modalities. In the aging literature, it is well established that the recognition of emotion in facial expressions declines with advancing age, and this also occurs with vocal expressions. By contrast, crossmodal integration processing in healthy aging individuals is less documented. Here, we investigated the age-related effects on emotion recognition when faces and voices were presented alone or simultaneously, allowing for crossmodal integration. In this study, 31 young adults (M = 25.8 years) and 31 older adults (M = 67.2 years) were instructed to identify several basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) and a neutral expression, which were displayed as visual (facial expressions), auditory (non-verbal affective vocalizations) or crossmodal (simultaneous, congruent facial and vocal affective expressions) stimuli. The results showed that older adults performed slower and worse than younger adults at recognizing negative emotions from isolated faces and voices. In the crossmodal condition, although slower, older adults were as accurate as younger except for anger. Importantly, additional analyses using the "race model" demonstrate that older adults benefited to the same extent as younger adults from the combination of facial and vocal emotional stimuli. These results help explain some conflicting results in the literature and may clarify emotional abilities related to daily life that are partially spared among older adults.

A case of bilateral frontal tumors without "frontal syndrome"

We report the longitudinal case study of a right-handed patient harboring two frontal tumors that benefited from bilateral simultaneous surgery. The tumors were WHO Grade II gliomas located in the left inferior frontal area (including the cingulate gyrus) and the right anterior superior frontal gyrus. The double tumor resection was guided by direct electrical stimulation of brain areas while the patient was awake. Neuropsychological assessments were administered before and after the surgery to analyse how the brain functions in the presence of two frontal gliomas that affect both hemispheres and reacts to a bilateral resection, which can brutally compromise the neuronal connectivity, progressively established during the infiltrating process. We showed that both the tumor infiltration and their bilateral resection did not lead to a "frontal syndrome" or a "dysexecutive syndrome" predicted by the localization models. However, a subtle fragility was observed in fine-grain language, memory and emotional skills. This case study reveals the significance of brain plasticity in the reorganization of cognitive networks, even in cases of bilateral tumors. It also confirms the clinical relevance of hodotopical brain models, which considers the brain to be organized in parallel-distributed networks around cortical centers and epicenters.