Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-93) was a well-known French neurologist. Although he is widely recognized for his discovery of several neurological disorders and his research into aphasia, Charcot's ideas about how the brain processes music are less well known. Charcot discussed the music abilities of several patients in the context of his "Friday…

Brain lesions to the white matter in peritrigonal regions, periventricular leukomalacia, in children who were born prematurely represent an important model for studying limitations on brain development. The lesional pattern is of early origin and bilateral, that constrains the compensatory potential of the brain. We suggest that (i) topography and…

This article discusses Charles Darwin's interest in topics that may broadly be defined as "neurological" in character. Using published and manuscript materials, it examines the sources of Darwin's knowledge of neurological matters and seeks to explain why questions concerning the relation of mind and brain both in humans and other animals were…

A traditional method of localizing brain functions has been to identify shared areas of brain damage in individuals who have a particular deficit. The rationale of this "lesion overlap" approach is straightforward: if the individuals can no longer perform the function, the area of brain damaged in most of these individuals must have been…

Patients with Taylor's type focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) present with seizures that are often medically intractable. Here, we attempted to identify the cellular and pharmacological mechanisms responsible for this epileptogenic state by using field potential and K[superscript +]-selective recordings in neocortical slices obtained from epileptic…

Myelin protein zero (MPZ) is a member of the immunoglobulin gene superfamily with single extracellular, transmembrane and cytoplasmic domains. Homotypic interactions between extracellular domains of MPZ adhere adjacent myelin wraps to each other. MPZ is also necessary for myelin compaction since mice which lack MPZ develop severe dysmyelinating…

In serial studies of multiple sclerosis lesions, reductions in magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) are thought to be due to demyelination and axonal loss, with later rises due to remyelination. This study followed serial changes in MTR in acute optic neuritis in combination with clinical and electrophysiological measurements to determine if the MTR…

X-linked Kallmann's (XKS) subjects, who display mirror movements, have abnormal corticospinal tracts which innervate motoneurons of the left and right distal muscles of the upper limb. The size of the abnormal ipsilateral projection is variable. We have used coherence and cumulant analysis between EEG and first dorsal interosseous muscle (1DI) EMG…

The parietal cortex has been proposed as part of the neural network for guiding spatial attention. However, it is unclear to what degree the parietal cortex contributes to the attentional modulations of activities of the visual cortex and the engagement of the frontal cortex in the attention network. We recorded behavioural performance and…

Confrontation naming is impaired in neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Some behavioural observations suggest a common source of impaired naming across these patient groups, while others find partially unique patterns of naming difficulty. We hypothesized…

Recent findings raised evidence that in early-onset left temporal lobe epilepsy, women show greater functional plasticity for verbal memory than men. In particular, women with lesion- or epilepsy-driven atypical language dominance show an advantage over men. The question asked in this study was whether there is evidence of sex- and language…