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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Resting-State Functional Connectivity In Youth With Gender Dysphoria, Felix L. Garcia Sep 2018

Resting-State Functional Connectivity In Youth With Gender Dysphoria, Felix L. Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Current developmental models of gender identity and gender dysphoria (GD) lack sex-specific profiles of brain function that differentiate between typically-developing and cross-gender identified youth, as postulated by models like the unified theory of the origins of sex differences (Arnold, 2009) and the neurobiological theory of the origins of transsexuality (Swaab & Garcia-Falgueras, 2009). Previously, investigators have used brain imaging modalities such as Resting-State functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (R-fMRI) to demonstrate differences in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between typically-developing male and female youth, and between typically-developing and GID-diagnosed youth. In the present pilot study, I used R-fMRI to investigate differences in …


Spinal Control Of Locomotion: Individual Neurons, Their Circuits And Functions, Marie-Pascale Côté, Lynda M. Murray, Maria Knikou Jun 2018

Spinal Control Of Locomotion: Individual Neurons, Their Circuits And Functions, Marie-Pascale Côté, Lynda M. Murray, Maria Knikou

Publications and Research

Systematic research on the physiological and anatomical characteristics of spinal cord interneurons along with their functional output has evolved for more than one century. Despite significant progress in our understanding of these networks and their role in generating and modulating movement, it has remained a challenge to elucidate the properties of the locomotor rhythm across species. Neurophysiological experimental evidence indicates similarities in the function of interneurons mediating afferent information regarding muscle stretch and loading, being affected by motor axon collaterals and those mediating presynaptic inhibition in animals and humans when their function is assessed at rest. However, significantly different muscle …


Multiple Sclerosis Identification Based On Fractional Fourier Entropy And A Modified Jaya Algorithm, Shui-Hua Wang, Hong Cheng, Preetha Phillips, Yu-Dong Zhang Apr 2018

Multiple Sclerosis Identification Based On Fractional Fourier Entropy And A Modified Jaya Algorithm, Shui-Hua Wang, Hong Cheng, Preetha Phillips, Yu-Dong Zhang

Publications and Research

Aim: Currently, identifying multiple sclerosis (MS) by human experts may come across the problem of “normal-appearing white matter”, which causes a low sensitivity. Methods: In this study, we presented a computer vision based approached to identify MS in an automatic way. This proposed method first extracted the fractional Fourier entropy map from a specified brain image. Afterwards, it sent the features to a multilayer perceptron trained by a proposed improved parameter-free Jaya algorithm. We used cost-sensitivity learning to handle the imbalanced data problem. Results: The 10 × 10-fold cross validation showed our method yielded a sensitivity of 97.40 ± 0.60%, …


Transspinal Direct Current Stimulation Produces Persistent Plasticity In Human Motor Pathways, Lynda M. Murray, Behdad Tahayori, Maria Knikou Jan 2018

Transspinal Direct Current Stimulation Produces Persistent Plasticity In Human Motor Pathways, Lynda M. Murray, Behdad Tahayori, Maria Knikou

Publications and Research

The spinal cord is an integration center for descending, ascending, and segmental neural signals. Noninvasive transspinal stimulation may thus constitute an effective method for concomitant modulation of local and distal neural circuits. In this study, we established changes in cortical excitability and input/output function of corticospinal and spinal neural circuits before, at 0–15 and at 30–45 minutes after cathodal, anodal, and sham transspinal direct current stimulation (tsDCS) to the thoracic region in healthy individuals. We found that intracortical inhibition was different among stimulation polarities, however remained unchanged over time. Intracortical facilitation increased after cathodal and anodal tsDCS delivered with subjects …