Metastatic cervical carcinoma to the brain masquerading as a butterfly glioma: A case report.

Background: Metastatic cervical cancer to the brain is a rare occurrence, representing approximately 1.5% of metastatic cases. We report a rare presentation of cervical cancer with brain metastasis to the corpus callosum. The patient was initially suspected to have a primary glioma but was diagnosed with a metastatic cervical carcinoma lesion through both stereotactic and then opens biopsy. Case Description: A 53-year-old female, with Stage III adenosquamous cervical carcinoma, presented with a large heterogeneously enhancing mass in the corpus callosum body with extension in the cingulate gyrus concerning for glioma. A stereotactic biopsy revealed hypercellular and gliotic brain tissue, while an open biopsy showed an epithelioid neoplasm consistent with metastatic cervical adenosquamous carcinoma. The patient underwent a craniotomy and recovered well and was discharged in stable condition. Conclusion: Brain metastases from cervical cancer are uncommon. We present a rare case of metastatic cervical carcinoma which appeared on imaging to mimic a butterfly glioma. The patient's history and histopathological examination were essential in determining the correct diagnosis and receiving timely treatment.

Invasive Electrophysiology for Circuit Discovery and Study of Comorbid Psychiatric Disorders in Patients With Epilepsy: Challenges, Opportunities, and Novel Technologies.

Intracranial electroencephalographic (iEEG) recordings from patients with epilepsy provide distinct opportunities and novel data for the study of co-occurring psychiatric disorders. Comorbid psychiatric disorders are very common in drug-resistant epilepsy and their added complexity warrants careful consideration. In this review, we first discuss psychiatric comorbidities and symptoms in patients with epilepsy. We describe how epilepsy can potentially impact patient presentation and how these factors can be addressed in the experimental designs of studies focused on the electrophysiologic correlates of mood. Second, we review emerging technologies to integrate long-term iEEG recording with dense behavioral tracking in naturalistic environments. Third, we explore questions on how best to address the intersection between epilepsy and psychiatric comorbidities. Advances in ambulatory iEEG and long-term behavioral monitoring technologies will be instrumental in studying the intersection of seizures, epilepsy, psychiatric comorbidities, and their underlying circuitry.

Multifactorial motor behavior assessment for real-time evaluation of emerging therapeutics to treat neurologic impairments.

Integrating multiple assessment parameters of motor behavior is critical for understanding neural activity dynamics during motor control in both intact and dysfunctional nervous systems. Here, we described a novel approach (termed Multifactorial Behavioral Assessment (MfBA)) to integrate, in real-time, electrophysiological and biomechanical properties of rodent spinal sensorimotor network activity with behavioral aspects of motor task performance. Specifically, the MfBA simultaneously records limb kinematics, multi-directional forces and electrophysiological metrics, such as high-fidelity chronic intramuscular electromyography synchronized in time to spinal stimulation in order to characterize spinal cord functional motor evoked potentials (fMEPs). Additionally, we designed the MfBA to incorporate a body weight support system to allow bipedal and quadrupedal stepping on a treadmill and in an open field environment to assess function in rodent models of neurologic disorders that impact motor activity. This novel approach was validated using, a neurologically intact cohort, a cohort with unilateral Parkinsonian motor deficits due to midbrain lesioning, and a cohort with complete hind limb paralysis due to T8 spinal cord transection. In the SCI cohort, lumbosacral epidural electrical stimulation (EES) was applied, with and without administration of the serotonergic agonist Quipazine, to enable hind limb motor functions following paralysis. The results presented herein demonstrate the MfBA is capable of integrating multiple metrics of motor activity in order to characterize relationships between EES inputs that modulate mono- and polysynaptic outputs from spinal circuitry which in turn, can be used to elucidate underlying electrophysiologic mechanisms of motor behavior. These results also demonstrate that proposed MfBA is an effective tool to integrate biomechanical and electrophysiology metrics, synchronized to therapeutic inputs such as EES or pharmacology, during body weight supported treadmill or open field motor activities, to target a high range of variations in motor behavior as a result of neurological deficit at the different levels of CNS.

Songbird Ventral Pallidum Sends Diverse Performance Error Signals to Dopaminergic Midbrain.

Motor skills improve with practice, requiring outcomes to be evaluated against ever-changing performance benchmarks, yet it remains unclear how performance error signals are computed. Here, we show that the songbird ventral pallidum (VP) is required for song learning and sends diverse song timing and performance error signals to the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Viral tracing revealed inputs to VP from auditory and vocal motor thalamus, auditory and vocal motor cortex, and VTA. Our findings show that VP circuits, commonly associated with hedonic functions, signal performance error during motor sequence learning.

Simultaneous parotitis and ipsilateral herpes zoster ophthalmicus: coincidence?

A 43-year-old previously healthy man presented to the primary care clinic with concurrent ipsilateral viral parotitis and herpes zoster ophthalmicus. The patient experienced painful swelling below the right ear as well as painful vesicles on the right forehead, eyelid and cheek in the V1 dermatomal region. There were no lesions in the oral cavity or nose. Antibody titres confirmed active varicella zoster virus in the absence of mumps or herpes simplex virus 1 and 2 and unilateral parotitis were confirmed to be non-suppurative by the patient's primary care physician and the neurologist. Both conditions resolved within 3 weeks with appropriate treatment.

Origins of basal ganglia output signals in singing juvenile birds.

Across species, complex circuits inside the basal ganglia (BG) converge on pallidal output neurons that exhibit movement-locked firing patterns. Yet the origins of these firing patterns remain poorly understood. In songbirds during vocal babbling, BG output neurons homologous to those found in the primate internal pallidal segment are uniformly activated in the tens of milliseconds prior to syllable onsets. To test the origins of this remarkably homogenous BG output signal, we recorded from diverse upstream BG cell types during babbling. Prior to syllable onsets, at the same time that internal pallidal segment-like neurons were activated, putative medium spiny neurons, fast spiking and tonically active interneurons also exhibited transient rate increases. In contrast, pallidal neurons homologous to those found in primate external pallidal segment exhibited transient rate decreases. To test origins of these signals, we performed recordings following lesion of corticostriatal inputs from premotor nucleus HVC. HVC lesions largely abolished these syllable-locked signals. Altogether, these findings indicate a striking homogeneity of syllable timing signals in the songbird BG during babbling and are consistent with a role for the indirect and hyperdirect pathways in transforming cortical inputs into BG outputs during an exploratory behavior.