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Makris, Nikolaos

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Makris

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Nikolaos

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Makris, Nikolaos
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    Hypothalamus and amygdala response to acupuncture stimuli in carpal tunnel syndrome
    (Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health), 2007) Napadow, Vitaly; Kettner, N.; Liu, J.; Li, M.; Kwong, Kenneth; Vangel, Mark; Makris, Nikolaos; Audette, Joseph; Hui, K. K.S.
    Brain processing of acupuncture stimuli in chronic neuropathic pain patients may underlie its beneficial effects. We used fMRI to evaluate verum and sham acupuncture stimulation at acupoint LI-4 in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) patients and healthy controls (HC). CTS patients were retested after 5 weeks of acupuncture therapy. Thus, we investigated both the short-term brain response to acupuncture stimulation, as well as the influence of longer-term acupuncture therapy effects on this short-term response. CTS patients responded to verum acupuncture with greater activation in the hypothalamus and deactivation in the amygdala as compared to HC, controlling for the non-specific effects of sham acupuncture. A similar difference was found between CTS patients at baseline and after acupuncture therapy. For baseline CTS patients responding to verum acupuncture, functional connectivity was found between the hypothalamus and amygdala – the less deactivation in the amygdala, the greater the activation in the hypothalamus, and vice versa. Furthermore, hypothalamic response correlated positively with the degree of maladaptive cortical plasticity in CTS patients (inter-digit separation distance). This is the first evidence suggesting that chronic pain patients respond to acupuncture differently than HC, through a coordinated limbic network including the hypothalamus and amygdala.
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    Brain white matter microstructure is associated with susceptibility to motion-induced nausea
    (Wiley, 2013) Napadow, Vitaly; Sheehan, J.; Kim, Jieun; Dassatti, Allison; Thurler, Andrea H.; Surjanhata, Brian; Vangel, Mark; Makris, Nikolaos; Schaechter, Judith; Kuo, Braden
    Nausea is associated with significant morbidity, and there is a wide range in the propensity of individuals to experience nausea. The neural basis of this heterogeneity in nausea susceptibility is poorly understood. Our previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in healthy adults showed that a visual motion stimulus caused activation in the right MT+/V5 area, and that increased sensation of nausea due to this stimulus was associated with increased activation in the right anterior insula. For the current study, we hypothesized that individual differences in visual motion-induced nausea are due to microstructural differences in the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), the white-matter tract connecting the right visual motion processing area (MT+/V5) and right anterior insula. To test this hypothesis, we acquired diffusion tensor imaging data from 30 healthy adults who were subsequently dichotomized into high and low nausea susceptibility groups based on the Motion Sickness Susceptibility Scale. We quantified diffusion along the IFOF for each subject based on axial diffusivity (AD); radial diffusivity (RD), mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA), and evaluated between-group differences in these diffusion metrics. Subjects with high susceptibility to nausea rated significantly (p<0.001) higher nausea intensity to visual motion stimuli and had significantly (p<0.05) lower AD and MD along the right IFOF compared to subjects with low susceptibility to nausea. This result suggests that differences in white-matter microstructure within tracts connecting visual motion and nausea-processing brain areas may contribute to nausea susceptibility or may have resulted from an increased history of nausea episodes.
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    Human middle longitudinal fascicle: segregation and behavioral-clinical implications of two distinct fiber connections linking temporal pole and superior temporal gyrus with the angular gyrus or superior parietal lobule using multi-tensor tractography
    (Springer Science + Business Media, 2013) Makris, Nikolaos; Preti, M. G.; Wassermann, D.; Rathi, Yogesh; Papadimitriou, G. M.; Yergatian, C.; Dickerson, Bradford; Shenton, Martha; Kubicki, Marek
    The middle longitudinal fascicle (MdLF) is a major fiber connection running principally between the superior temporal gyrus and the parietal lobe, neocortical regions of great biological and clinical interest. Although one of the most prominent cerebral association fiber tracts it has only recently been discovered in humans. In this high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) MRI study, we delineated the two major fiber connections of the human MdLF, by examining morphology, topography, cortical connections, biophysical measures, volume and length in seventy-four brains. These two fiber connections course together through the dorsal temporal pole and the superior temporal gyrus maintaining a characteristic topographic relationship in the mediolateral and ventrodorsal dimensions. As these pathways course towards the parietal lobe, they split to form separate fiber pathways, one following a ventrolateral trajectory and connecting with the angular gyrus and the other following a dorsomedial route and connecting with the superior parietal lobule. Based on the functions of their cortical affiliations, we suggest that the superior temporal-angular connection of the MdLF, i.e., STG(MdLF)AG plays a role in language and attention, whereas the superior temporal-superior parietal connection of the MdLF, i.e., STG(MdLF)SPL is involved in visuospatial and integrative audiovisual functions. Furthermore, the MdLF may have clinical implications in neurodegenerative disorders such as primary progressive aphasia, frontotemporal dementia, posterior cortical atrophy, corticobulbar degeneration and Alzheimer’s disease as well as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia.
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    Gray matter alterations in early aging: A diffusion magnetic resonance imaging study
    (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) Rathi, Yogesh; Pasternak, Ofer; Savadjiev, Peter; Michailovich, O.; Bouix, Sylvain; Kubicki, Marek; Westin, Carl-Fredrik; Makris, Nikolaos; Shenton, Martha
    Many studies have observed altered neurofunctional and structural organization in the aging brain. These observations from functional neuroimaging studies show a shift in brain activity from the posterior to the anterior regions with aging (PASA model), as well as a decrease in cortical thickness, which is more pronounced in the frontal lobe followed by the parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes (retrogenesis model). However, very little work has been done using diffusion MRI (dMRI) with respect to examining the structural tissue alterations underlying these neurofunctional changes in the gray matter. Thus, for the first time, we propose to examine gray matter changes using diffusion MRI in the context of aging. In this work, we propose a novel dMRI based measure of gray matter “heterogeneity” that elucidates these functional and structural models (PASA and retrogenesis) of aging from the viewpoint of diffusion MRI. In a cohort of 85 subjects (all males, ages 15–55 years), we show very high correlation between age and “heterogeneity” (a measure of structural layout of tissue in a region-of-interest) in specific brain regions. We examine gray matter alterations by grouping brain regions into anatomical lobes as well as functional zones. Our findings from dMRI data connects the functional and structural domains and confirms the “retrogenesis” hypothesis of gray matter alterations while lending support to the neurofunctional PASA model of aging in addition to showing the preservation of paralimbic areas during healthy aging.
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    Human middle longitudinal fascicle: variations in patterns of anatomical connections
    (Springer Science + Business Media, 2012) Makris, Nikolaos; Preti, M. G.; Asami, T.; Pelavin, P.; Campbell, B.; Papadimitriou, G. M.; Kaiser, J.; Baselli, G.; Westin, Carl-Fredrik; Shenton, Martha; Kubicki, Marek
    Based on high-resolution diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI) tractographic analyses in thirty-nine healthy adult subjects we derived patterns of connections and measures of volume and biophysical parameters, such as fractional anisotropy (FA) for the human middle longitudinal fascicle (MdLF). Compared to previous studies, we found that the cortical connections of the MdLF in humans appear to go beyond the superior temporal (STG) and angular (AG) gyri, extending to the temporal pole (TP), superior parietal lobule (SPL), supramarginal gyrus, precuneus and the occipital lobe (including the cuneus and lateral occipital areas). Importantly, the MdLF showed a striking lateralized pattern with predominant connections between the TP, STG and AG on the left and TP, STG and SPL on the right hemisphere. In light of the results of the present study, and of the known functional role of the cortical areas interconnected by the MdLF, we suggested that this fiber pathway might be related to language, high order auditory association, visuospatial and attention functions.
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    The social brain network in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome: a diffusion tensor imaging study
    (BioMed Central, 2017) Olszewski, Amy K.; Kikinis, Zora; Gonzalez, Christie S.; Coman, Ioana L.; Makris, Nikolaos; Gong, Xue; Rathi, Yogesh; Zhu, Anni; Antshel, Kevin M.; Fremont, Wanda; Kubicki, Marek; Bouix, Sylvain; Shenton, Martha; Kates, Wendy R.
    Background: Chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) is a neurogenetic disorder that is associated with a 25-fold increase in schizophrenia. Both individuals with 22q11.2DS and those with schizophrenia present with social cognitive deficits, which are putatively subserved by a network of brain regions that are involved in the processing of social cognitive information. This study used two-tensor tractography to examine the white matter tracts believed to underlie the social brain network in a group of 57 young adults with 22q11.2DS compared to 30 unaffected controls. Results: Results indicated that relative to controls, participants with 22q11.2DS showed significant differences in several DTI metrics within the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, cingulum bundle, thalamo-frontal tract, and inferior longitudinal fasciculus. In addition, participants with 22q11.2DS showed significant differences in scores on measures of social cognition, including the Social Responsiveness Scale and Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire. Further analyses among individuals with 22q11.2DS demonstrated an association between DTI metrics and positive and negative symptoms of psychosis, as well as differentiation between individuals with 22q11.2DS and overt psychosis, relative to those with positive prodromal symptoms or no psychosis. Conclusions: Findings suggest that white matter disruption, specifically disrupted axonal coherence in the right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, may be a biomarker for social cognitive difficulties and psychosis in individuals with 22q11.2DS. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12993-017-0122-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.