Conditioned facilitation of brain reward function after repeated cocaine administration.

Cocaine lowers brain reward thresholds, reflecting increased brain reward function. The authors investigated whether, similar to acute cocaine administration, cocaine-predictive conditioned stimuli would lower intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) thresholds. Rats received a saline injection for 5 days, a cocaine injection (10 mg/kg) for 20 consecutive days, then saline for 5 additional days. Thresholds were measured immediately before and 10 min after each injection. The initial 5 saline injections had no effect on thresholds, whereas cocaine significantly lowered thresholds for 20 days. There was no tolerance or sensitization to this effect of cocaine over days. During the last 5 days when cocaine administration was substituted with saline, rats demonstrated a conditioned lowering of thresholds during the 2nd daily ICSS session. These data demonstrate that cocaine-predictive conditioned stimuli induce a conditioned facilitation of brain reward function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prolonged rewarding stimulation of the rat medial forebrain bundle: Neurochemical and behavioral consequences.

Extracellular dopamine levels were measured in the rat nucleus accumbens by means of in vivo microdialysis. Delivery of rewarding medial forebrain bundle stimulation at a low rate (5 trains/min) produced a sustained elevation of dopamine levels, regardless of whether train onset was predictable. When the rate of train delivery was increased to 40 trains/min, dopamine levels rose rapidly during the first 40 min but then declined toward the baseline range. The rewarding impact of the stimulation was reduced following prior delivery of stimulation at the high, but not the low, rate. These results support the idea that dopamine tone plays an enabling role in brain stimulation reward and is elevated similarly by predictable and unpredictable stimulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intracranial self-stimulation of the dorsal raphe sensitizes psychostimulant locomotion.

The authors hypothesized that repeated rewarding electrical stimulation of the dorsal raphe can produce behavioral sensitization to psychostimulants. Groups of male rats were implanted with a stimulation electrode and preexposed to brain stimulation at parameters set to equate rewarding effectiveness across rats. Control groups were implanted with an electrode but never stimulated, or not implanted at all. Twenty-four hours after the 12th self-stimulation session, all groups were challenged with amphetamine (0.5 mg/kg, ip), nicotine (0.2 mg/kg, sc), or saline, and locomotor activity was measured for 1 hr. Locomotor responses to amphetamine and to nicotine were significantly greater in rats preexposed to brain stimulation. These findings suggest at least partial overlap of underlying substrates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparison of behaviors elicited by electrical brain stimulation in dorsal brain stem and hypothalamus of rats.

Investigated 4 brain-stimulation phenomena elicited from both dorsal brain stem and hypothalamic sites, using a total of 20 male albino Holtzman Sprague-Dawley rats. Results show that (a) intracranial self-stimulation rate-intensity functions for dorsal brain stem and hypothalamic sites yielded very high (over 1,000 responses/15 min) to moderate (201-500 responses/15 min) response rates; (b) dextroamphetamine produced higher response rates than either levoamphetamine or saline at both dorsal brain stem and hypothalamic sites, indicating that noradrenergic dorsal brain stem fibers (or cell bodies) support intracranial self-stimulation; (c) dorsal brain stem and hypothalamic self-stimulation sites reliably produced escape behavior; (d) simultaneous stimulation of dorsal brain stem and hypothalamic sites at subthreshold intensities interacted to produce suprathreshold response rates. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Traceable Nanoparticles with Dual Targeting and ROS Response for RNAi‐Based Immunochemotherapy of Intracranial Glioblastoma Treatment

The chemotherapy of glioblastoma is severely hindered by the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, especially the tumor growth factor β (TGF‐β), an immunosuppressive cytokine. In this study, it is proposed to employ RNAi‐based immunomodulation to modify the tumor immune microenvironment and improve the effect of chemotherapy. Herein, a nanotheranostic system (Angiopep LipoPCB(Temozolomide+BAP/siTGF‐β), ALBTA) with dual targeting and ROS response is established for intracranial glioblastoma treatment. The traceable nanoparticles exhibit strong siRNA condensation, high drug loading efficiency, good serum stability, and magnetic property. They can efficiently cross the blood–brain barrier and target to glioblastoma cells via receptor‐mediated transcytosis. The zwitterionic lipid (distearoyl phosphoethanol‐amine‐polycarboxybetaine lipid) in ALBTA promotes endosomal/lysosomal escape, and thus enhances the cytotoxicity of temozolomide and improves gene silencing efficiency of siTGF‐β. ALBTA significantly improves the immunosuppressive microenvironment and prolongs the survival time of glioma‐bearing mice. Moreover, ALBTA can be accurately traced by MRI in brain tumors. The study indicates that this immunochemotherapeutic platform can serve as a flexible and powerful synergistic system for treatment with brain tumors as well as other brain diseases in central nervous system.     

基于代价敏感Faster R-CNN的脑CT影像出血诊断方法

脑出血是一种在患者颅内突然发生的重急症,常伴随有强烈的症状和较高致死率,基于脑CT影像对脑出血进行自动化快速诊断具有重要意义。其中,临床上有效应用的实现不仅要求诊断结果的准确性、诊断速度和结果解释能力,尤其要重视出血漏检情形。因此本文提出代价敏感的Faster R-CNN模型,通过自动调节模型中锚的训练样本比例以及在损失函数中引入衡量阳性样本重要性的超参数等方式,更多地关注阳性样本和漏检情形提升检测效果,最后通过定位的具体目标区域来诊断脑内出血情况。经多次实验选择性能最优的网络结构和合适的超参数,利用多项指标度量最终模型的检测和诊断效果。实验结果表明,代价敏感的Faster R-CNN方法能够从减少漏检的角度上更好地识别出血区域,进而提高不平衡代价下的脑出血诊断效果。     

基于自适应采样与Dense机制的颅内动脉瘤血管多结构分割

颅内动脉瘤是一种具有较高致死和致残率的常见脑血管疾病。近年来,临床对基于影像的智能化和精准化的疾病诊断策略提出了迫切需求,其中血管及病灶的精准分割是其重要基础。本文提出了一种新型的颅内动脉瘤血管多结构分割框架,利用血管先验灰度特征建立了自适应的数据采样方法,并设计了一种基于Dense机制的深度网络模型实现血管分割。本文收集了135例颅内动脉瘤患者（年龄分布：54.7±12.7岁, 75名男性）的飞行时间磁共振血管影像进行模型的训练和测试。相比于原空间采样和图像压缩方法（平均Dice相似性系数：0.829和0.780）,自适应采样方法可以明显提升血管分割的精度（平均Dice相似性系数：0.858）;与经典的3D UNet、SegNet和DeepLabV3+网络相比（平均Dice相似性系数：0.854,0.824和0.800）,基于Dense机制的网络能够利用更少的计算资源实现更优的分割效果,对于不同位置和大小的动脉瘤也表现出良好的分割鲁棒性。     

PATIENT-SPECIFIC BLOOD DYNAMIC SIMULATIONS IN ASSESSING ENDOVASCULAR OCCLUSION OF INTRACRANIAL ANEURYSMS

According to recent studies, there are various potential predictors for surgical outcome for cerebral aneurysms. An accurate surgical outcome assessment would help make better-informed decisions and avoid the risk of rebleeding. It is well known that hemodynamic factors play an important role in the pathogenesis and treatment of intracranial aneurysms. In this article, a computational fluid dynamic analysis is applied to one patient-specific model of the cerebral aneurysm located at the tip of basilar artery, by which the differences of hemodynamic parameters before and after endovascular treatment may be evaluated. Based on the model, we show that the flow behavior near the neck of the aneurysm sees great differences after endovascular treatment as compared with that before treatment, which also affects the wall shear stress and the displacement distribution. In addition, our whole simulation process is based on a series of CFD commercial software packages, which are easily available for doctors to implement such a method in their daily practice. These results would be used to assess the outcome of endovascular treatment for the aneurysm occlusion.     

Amendment on the strain measurement of thin-walled human skull shell as intracranial pressure changes

The human skull, composed of tabula externa, tabula interna, and a porous diploe sandwiched in between, is deformed with changing intracranial pressure (ICP). Because the human skull's thickness is only 6 mm, it is simplified as a thin-walled shell. The objective of this article is to analyze the strain of the thin-walled shell by the stress-strain calculation of a human skull with changing ICP. Under the same loading conditions, using finite element analysis (FEA), the strains of the human skull were calculated and the results were compared with the measurements of the simulative experiment in vitro. It is demonstrated that the strain of the thin-walled shell is totally measured by pasting the one-way strain foils on the exterior surface of the shell with suitable amendment for data. The amendment scope of the measured strain values of the thin-walled shell is from 13.04% to 22.22%.     

生物电阻抗成像在颅内压无创检测仪器中的原理研究

颅内压是指颅腔内容物对颅腔壁产生的压力。其变化总是伴随着颅内部分区域电阻率的变化,从而引起颅内阻抗的变化。通过检测颅内阻抗的变化可以间接反映颅内压的变化趋势,达到检测颅内压的目的。重点阐述生物阻抗的测量原理和电阻抗法监护颅内压的原理,详细说明了颅内压增高与颅内阻抗变化的关系,并建立了相应变化对照曲线。利用此方法可以进行颅内压的无创检测。该方法在临床仪器中的使用可以较大程度上改善病患的检查治疗环境。