This study aims to investigate the structural reorganization in the sensorimotor area of the brain in patients with gliomas, distinguishing between those with impaired and unimpaired strength. Using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and region of interest (ROI) analysis, gray matter volumes (GMV) were compared in the contralesional primary motor gyrus, primary sensory gyrus, premotor area, bilateral supplementary motor area, and medial Brodmann area 8 (BA8). The results revealed that in patients with right hemisphere gliomas, the right medial BA8 volume was significantly larger in the impaired group than in the unimpaired group, with both groups exceeding the volume in 16 healthy controls (HCs). In patients with left hemisphere gliomas, the right supplementary motor area (SMA) was more pronounced in the impaired group compared to the unimpaired group, and both groups were greater than HCs. Additionally, the volumes of the right medial BA8 in both the impaired group were greater than HCs. Contralateral expansions in the gray matter of hand- and trunk-related cortices of the premotor area, precentral gyrus, and postcentral gyrus were observed compared to HCs. Furthermore, a negative correlation was found between hand Medical Research Council (MRC) score and volumes of the contralateral SMA and bilateral medial BA8. Notably, our findings reveal consistent results across both analytical approaches in identifying significant structural reorganizations within the sensorimotor cortex. These consistent findings underscore the adaptive neuroplastic responses to glioma presence, highlighting potential areas of interest for further neurosurgical planning and rehabilitation strategies.

UNASSIGNED: In 2011, Brants et al. trained eight individuals to become Greeble experts and found neuronal inversion effects [NIEs; i.e., higher fusiform face area (FFA) activity for upright, rather than inverted Greebles]. These effects were also found for faces, both before and after training. By claiming to have replicated the seminal Greeble training study by Gauthier and colleagues in 1999, Brants et al. interpreted these results as participants viewing Greebles as faces throughout training, contrary to the original argument of subjects becoming Greeble experts only after training. However, Brants et al.\'s claim presents two issues. First, their behavioral training results did not replicate those of Gauthier and Tarr conducted in 1997 and 1998, raising concerns of whether the right training regime had been adopted. Second, both a literature review and meta-analysis of NIEs in the FFA suggest its impotency as an index of the face(-like) processing.
UNASSIGNED: To empirically evaluate these issues, the present study compared two documented training paradigms Gauthier and colleagues in 1997 and 1998, and compared their impact on the brain.
UNASSIGNED: Sixteen NCKU undergraduate and graduate students (nine girls) were recruited. Sixty Greeble exemplars were categorized by two genders, five families, and six individual levels. The participants were randomly divided into two groups (one for Greeble classification at all three levels and the other for gender- and individual-level training). Several fMRI tasks were administered at various time points, specifically, before training (1st), during training (2nd), and typically no <24 h after reaching expertise criterion (3rd).
UNASSIGNED: The ROI analysis results showed significant increases in the FFA for Greebles, and a clear neural \"adaptation,\" both only in the Gauthier97 group and only after training, reflecting clear modulation of extensive experiences following an \"appropriate\" training regime. In both groups, no clear NIEs for faces nor Greebles were found, which was also in line with the review of extant studies bearing this comparison.
UNASSIGNED: Collectively, these results invalidate the assumptions behind Brants et al.\'s findings.

Automatic identification and categorization of Alzheimer\'s patients and the ability to distinguish between different levels of this disease would be very helpful to the research community studying this disease since non-automatic approaches are both very time-consuming and highly dependent upon the experience of experts. Here, it is proposed that instantaneous cerebral phase and envelope information from functional magnetic resonance imaging data is of use to discriminate between Alzheimer\'s patients, mild cognitively impaired subjects and healthy individuals. Following a region-of-interest analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data, different features including power, entropy, and coherency features are derived from the instantaneous phase and envelope signal sequences. Various sets of features are calculated and fed to a sequential forward floating feature selection algorithm to identify the most discriminative and informative feature sets. A Student\'s t-test was employed to select the most relevant features from the sets. Finally, a K-nearest neighbor classifier is used to distinguish between classes in a three-class categorization problem. The reported performance in overall accuracy using functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 111 combined participants is 80.1% with 80.0% sensitivity for the distinction of both Alzheimer\'s and healthy categories. This is comparable to the state-of-the-art approaches recently proposed for this task. The significance of obtained results was statistically confirmed by the evaluation of standard classification performance indicators. Results illustrate that the analytic phase and envelope feature indices derived from the region of interest signals described here are significant discriminators suited to distinguish between Alzheimer patients and healthy subjects.

Introduction : The \"autonomous sensory meridian response\" (ASMR) is a neologism used to describe an internal sensation of deep relaxation and pleasant head tingling which is often stimulated by gentle sounds, light touch, and personal attention. Methods : An fMRI-based methodology was employed to examine the brain activation of subjects prescreened for ASMR-receptivity (n=10) as they watched ASMR videos and identified specific moments of relaxation and tingling. Results : Subjects who experienced ASMR showed significant activation in regions associated with both reward (NAcc) and emotional arousal (dACC and Insula/IFG). Brain activation during ASMR showed similarities to patterns previously observed in musical frisson as well as affiliative behaviors. Conclusion : This is the first study to measure the activation of various brain regions during ASMR and these results may help to reveal the mechanistic underpinnings of this sensation.

Due to anatomical variability across subjects many brain mapping experiments have analysis focused on a few particular regions of interest so as to circumvent the problem of sub-optimal statistics resulting from the lack of anatomical correspondence across subjects. Since the topographic distribution of experimental effects across the cortex is also often of interest, two separate analyses are often conducted, one on the regions of interest alone, as well as a separate \'whole brain\' analysis with sub-optimal spatial correspondence across brains. In this paper we present a new group alignment procedure which incorporates, from each subject, both macro-anatomical (curvature) information and functional information from standard localizer experiments. After specifying appropriate parameters to weight anatomical and functional alignment forces, we were able to create a group cortical reconstruction which was well aligned in terms of both anatomical and functional areas. We observed an increase in the overlap of functional areas as well as an improvement in group statistics following this integrated alignment procedure. We propose that, using this alignment scheme, two separate analyses may not be necessary as both analyses can be integrated into a single procedure. After an integrated structural and functional alignment one is able to carry out a whole brain analysis with improved statistical sensitivity due to the reduction in spatial variation in the location of functional regions of interest which fCBA accomplishes. Furthermore, regions in the vicinity of localised and aligned regions-of-interest will also benefit from the integrated alignment.