A Probabilistic Atlas of the Pineal Gland in the Standard Space

Examining the Dominant Presence of Brain Grey Matter in Autism During Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with symptoms appearing from early childhood. Behavioral modifications, special education, and medicines are used to treat ASD; however, the effectiveness of the treatments depends on early diagnosis of the disorder. The primary approach in diagnosing ASD is based on clinical interviews and valid scales. Still, methods based on brain imaging could also be possible diagnostic biomarkers for ASD.

Methods

To identify the amount of information the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals on ASD, we reviewed 292 task-based fMRI studies on ASD individuals. This study is part of a systematic review with the registration number CRD42017070975.

Results

We observed that face perception, language, attention, and social processing tasks were mainly studied in ASD. In addition, 73 brain regions, nearly 83% of brain grey matter, showed an altered activation between the ASD and normal individuals during these four tasks, either in a lower or a higher activation.

Conclusion

Using imaging methods, such as fMRI, to diagnose and predict ASD is a great objective; research similar to the present study could be the initial step.

Seven Ambiguities in Explaining the Human Memory System in the Principles of Neural Science Book

Memory is probably one of the most complex human cognitive functions, and in many years, thousands of studies have helped us better recognize this brain function. Professor Kandel and his colleagues have written one of the reference textbooks in neuroscience, which has also elaborated on the memory function. In this book, I encountered several ambiguities while explaining the memory system. Here, I share those points, either to find an answer to them or to let them be a suggestion for our future works. Professor Kandel has spent most of his meritorious lifetime studying the memory system; however, the brain is extremely complex, and as a result, we still have many years to comprehensively understand the neural mechanisms of brain functions.

Highlights

The human memory system is not yet well identified.Imaging studies are not able to locate the memory storage sites of the brain.Current theories cannot explain the huge amount of memory storage in the brain.Episodic memories of animals should be different with a human episodic memory?

Plain Language Summary

The human memory system is very complex, and we still have many questions on that. One of the questions is about the location of episodic memory storage in humans. Is that really happening in the brain? One other question is about studying the episodic memory in animals: do they really have an episodic memory similar to the humans? Prof. Kandel in his very valuable book has explained the memory system; however, many ambiguities are still unsolved. For example, the neuroimaging methods are nearly never able to speak of the site of memory "storage" in the brain, whereas many of their results are used as evidence for identifying the location of memory storage in the brain. Also, the hippocampus is emphasized to be responsible for the storage of episodic memories in animals, whereas a human whore hippocampus is resected is still able to retrieve his memories from before the surgery. As a result, we speculate that, despite all the very precious findings of Prof. Kandel, we still have to work in this field to reveal its mysteries.

Features of Cognitive and Emotional Sphere of a Teenager with Epiphysis Pathology and Concomitant Speech Disorder: An Analysis of a Single Case

<p style="text-align: justify;">The study of the features of cognitive impairments in various cerebral organic pathologies allows us to understand the role of individual structures of the brain in the implementation of mental activity and determine the appropriate ways of providing psychological assistance to patients. In a situation of rare pathology, the analysis of individual clinical cases is useful. The aim of this research was to study the state of cognitive functions in a 13-year-old male teenager with a cystic restructuring of the pineal gland and concomitant undifferentiated impairment of expressive speech. Changes in the epiphysis were detected in the patient in less than a month before this psychological study. During the examination, methods of pathopsychological and neuropsychological diagnostics, and projective graphic tests were used. In the course of neuropsychological research on a teenager, a violation of the ability to compose a syllabic kinetic scheme of utterance and, in general, a lack of dynamic and kinesthetic praxis, as well as interhemispheric interaction and auditory-speech memory were revealed. The main ways of providing psychological assistance to the patient were identified: neuropsychological correction aimed at restoring impaired speech function based on preserved higher mental functions, and restoration of the communicative function of speech. The obtained results of psychological research require further understanding and verification, primarily in order to understand the pathogenesis of cognitive disorders in the situation of cystic pineal gland rearrangement.</p>

The Effect of Cognitive Load on the Retrieval of Long-Term Memory: An fMRI Study

One of the less well-understood aspects of memory function is the mechanism by which the brain responds to an increasing load of memory, either during encoding or retrieval. Identifying the brain structures which manage this increasing cognitive demand would enhance our knowledge of human memory. Despite numerous studies about the effect of cognitive loads on working memory processes, whether these can be applied to long-term memory processes is unclear. We asked 32 healthy young volunteers to memorize all possible details of 24 images over a 12-day period ending 2 days before the fMRI scan. The images were of 12 categories relevant to daily events, with each category including a high and a low load image. Behavioral assessments on a separate group of participants (#22) provided the average loads of the images. The participants had to retrieve these previously memorized images during the fMRI scan in 15 s, with their eyes closed. We observed seven brain structures showing the highest activation with increasing load of the retrieved images, viz. parahippocampus, cerebellum, superior lateral occipital, fusiform and lingual gyri, precuneus, and posterior cingulate gyrus. Some structures showed reduced activation when retrieving higher load images, such as the anterior cingulate, insula, and supramarginal and postcentral gyri. The findings of this study revealed that the mechanism by which a difficult-to-retrieve memory is handled is mainly by elevating the activation of the responsible brain areas and not by getting other brain regions involved, which is a help to better understand the LTM retrieval process in the human brain.