Biomedical subjects

S M Brambati

Publications and source records attributed to S M Brambati.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Anatomical correlates of early mutism in progressive nonfluent aphasia.

Patients with progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) can become mute early in the course of the disease. Voxel-based morphometry showed that PNFA is associated with left anterior insula and inferior frontal atrophy. In PNFA with early mutism, volume loss was more prominent in the pars opercularis and extended into the left basal ganglia. Damage to the network of brain regions involved in both coordination and execution of speech causes mutism in PNFA.

Aged↗

PubMed2006

The anatomy of category-specific object naming in neurodegenerative diseases.

Neuropsychological studies suggest that knowledge about living and nonliving objects is processed in separate brain regions. However, lesion and functional neuroimaging studies have implicated different areas. To address this issue, we used voxel-based morphometry to correlate accuracy in naming line drawings of living and nonliving objects with gray matter volumes in 152 patients with various neurodegenerative diseases. The results showed a significant positive correlation between gray matter volumes in bilateral temporal cortices and total naming accuracy regardless of category. Naming scores for living stimuli correlated with gray matter volume in the medial portion of the right anterior temporal pole, whereas naming accuracy for familiarity-matched nonliving items correlated with the volume of the left posterior middle temporal gyrus. A previous behavioral study showed that the living stimuli used here also had in common the characteristic that they were defined by shared sensory semantic features, whereas items in the nonliving group were defined by their action-related semantic features. We propose that the anatomical segregation of living and nonliving categories is the result of their defining semantic features and the distinct neural subsystems used to process them.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Diffusion tensor imaging and voxel based morphometry study in early progressive supranuclear palsy.

BACKGROUND: A comprehensive characterisation of grey and white matter changes in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the second most common extrapyramidal syndrome after Parkinson disease, is still not available. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate grey and white matter changes in mild PSP patients by voxel based morphometry (VBM) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), respectively. METHODS: 14 mild PSP patients and 14 healthy controls entered the study and underwent a clinical and neuropsychological evaluation according with a standardised assessment. Each subject had a structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study. Processing analysis of MRI data was carried out according to optimised VBM and fractional anisotropy was determined. RESULTS: Compared with the controls, in PSP patients VBM analysis showed a significant clusters of reduced grey matter in premotor cortex, frontal operculum, anterior insula, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus, bilaterally. With regard to subcortical brain regions, the pulvinar, dorsomedial and anterior nuclei of the thalamus, and superior and inferior culliculum were affected bilaterally. A bilateral decrease in fractional anisotropy in superior longitudinal fasciculus, anterior part of corpus callosum, arcuate fascicolus, posterior thalamic radiations, and internal capsule, probably involving the cortico-bulbar tracts, was present in PSP patients. CONCLUSIONS: These data provide evidence for both grey and white matter degeneration in PSP from the early disease stage. These structural changes suggest that atrophy of cortical and subcortical structures and neurodegeneration of specific fibre tracts contribute to neurological deficits in PSP.

Aged↗

PubMed2004

Regional reductions of gray matter volume in familial dyslexia.

An in vivo anatomic study of gray matter volume was performed in a group of familial dyslexic individuals, using an optimized method of voxel-based morphometry. Focal abnormalities in gray matter volume were observed bilaterally in the planum temporale, inferior temporal cortex, and cerebellar nuclei, suggesting that the underlying anatomic abnormalities may be responsible for defective written language acquisition in these subjects.

Adolescent↗