The objectives of this study were to compare atrophy rates associated with normal aging and Alzheimer disease (AD) using the semi-automated Boundary Shift Integral (BSI) method and manual tracing of the entorhinal cortex (ERC) and hippocampus and calculate the power of BSI vs. ERC and hippocampal volume changes for clinical trials in AD. We quantified whole brain and ventricular BSI atrophy rates and ERC and hippocampal atrophy rates from longitudinal MRI data in 20 AD patients and 22 age-matched healthy controls.

Deep brain stimulation is a method that involves using an electric stimulus on a specific target in the brain with stereotaxic. It is a minimally invasive, safe, adjustable and reversible nerve involvement technology. At present, this technique is widely applied to treat movement disorders and has produced promising effects on mental symptoms, including combined anxiety and depression. Deep brain stimulation has therefore been employed as a novel treatment for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, habituation, Tourettes syndrome, presenile dementia, anorexia nervosa and other refractory mental illnesses. Many encouraging results have been reported. The aim of the present review was to briefly describe the mechanisms, target selection, side effects, ethical arguments and risks associated with deep brain stimulation. Although deep brain stimulation is a developing and promising treatment, a large amount of research is still required to determine its curative effect, and the selection of patients and targets must be subjected to strict ethical standards.

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of neurodevelopmental disorders that are characterized by impaired social interaction and communication skills, and are often accompanied by other behavioral symptoms such as repetitive or stereotyped behavior and abnormal sensory processing. Individual symptoms and cognitive functioning vary across the autism spectrum disorders. Little is known about the associated psychiatric disorders that may contribute to impairment. We identify the rates and type of psychiatric comorbidity associated with ASDs and explore the associations with variables identified as risk factors for child psychiatric disorders.

Drug-induced depressive disorders are classified in the DSM-III-R as organic mood syndrome, depressed type. The ability of certain drugs to cause depression is of clinical relevance because organic mood syndrome is a component of the differential diagnosis of depressive symptoms. There is no specific drug for which there is definitive evidence of a causal association with depressive symptoms or depressive disorders. Nevertheless, for a number of drugs, the evidence is suggestive, although not conclusively, of a causal association. Despite this, rational decisions about the continuation or discontinuation of drugs can often be made. In this paper, the literature is reviewed and guidelines are suggested for the management of patients with depressive symptoms which may be related to drugs.

Abnormalities of water homeostasis can be early expressions of neuronal dysfunction, brain atrophy, chronic cerebrovasculopathy and neurodegenerative disease. The aim of this study was to analyze the serum osmolality of subjects with cognitive impairment. The hydromolecular hypothesis intends to explain the relationship between dehydration and cognitive impairment in older patients as the result of protein misfolding and aggregation, in the presence of a low interstitial fluid volume, which is a defect of the microcirculation. Defective proteins were shown to impair the amount of information in brain biomolecular mechanisms, with consequent neuronal and synaptic damage.