Deans' stroke musings: Longitudinal fMRI studies: Exploring brain plasticity and repair in MS

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Longitudinal fMRI studies: Exploring brain plasticity and repair in MS

Ask your doctor to 'Explore brain plasticity and repair in stroke', because our fucking failures of stroke associations have not publicly done anything about this. You're going to need this to recover and if no one can explain how it specifically works then you are going to have a hard time accomplishing that recovery. Unless you are rich and can hire researchers to figure out neuroplasticity.
http://msj.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/12/17/1352458515619781.abstract?&

Christian Enzinger⇑
1. Department of Neurology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria/Division of Neuroradiology, Department of Radiology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Daniela Pinter
1. Department of Neurology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Maria A Rocca
1. Neuroimaging Research Unit and Department of Neurology, Institute of Experimental Neurology, Division of Neuroscience, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy
John De Luca
1. Kessler Foundation, West Orange, NJ, USA; Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA
Jaume Sastre-Garriga
1. Department of Neurology-Neuroimmunology and Multiple Sclerosis Centre of Catalonia (Cemcat), Edifici Cemcat, Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Bertrand Audoin
1. Aix-Marseille University, National Center for Scientific Research, Center for Magnetic Resonance in Biology and Medicine UMR 7339; Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurosciences, Timone University Hospital, Marseille, France
Massimo Filippi
1. Neuroimaging Research Unit and Department of Neurology, Institute of Experimental Neurology, Division of Neuroscience, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy

Department of Neurology, Medical University of Graz, Auenbruggerplatz 22, A-8036 Graz, Austria. chris.enzinger@medunigraz.at

Abstract

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has greatly advanced our understanding of cerebral functional changes occurring in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). However, most of our knowledge regarding brain plasticity and repair in MS as evidenced by fMRI has been extrapolated from cross-sectional studies across different phenotypes of the disease. This topical review provides an overview of this research, but also highlights limitations of existing fMRI studies with cross-sectional design. We then review the few existing longitudinal fMRI studies and discuss the feasibility and constraints of serial fMRI in individuals with MS. We further emphasize the potential to track fMRI changes in evolving disease and the insights this may give in terms of mechanisms of adaptation and repair, focusing on serial fMRI to monitor response to disease-modifying therapies or rehabilitation interventions. Finally, we offer recommendations for designing future research studies to overcome previous methodological shortcomings.