Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the most common and serious complication of diabetes mellitus, which is the main cause of vision loss in adults. Biological clock genes produce circadian rhythms and control its operation, while the disorder of the expression causes the occurrence and development of a series of diseases. It has been demonstrated that biological clock genes might take effects in the development and progression of DR. On the one hand, circadian rhythm disorder-related behavior disrupts the circadian oscillation of clock genes, and the change in its expression level is prone to unbalanced regulation of glucose metabolism, ultimately increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus and DR pathogenesis. On the other hand, DR patients exhibit symptoms of circadian rhythm disorders, and it has been suggested that the clock genes may control the development and progression of DR by affecting a variety of retinal pathophysiological processes. Therefore, maintaining normal circadian rhythm can be used as a disease prevention strategy, and studying the molecular mechanism of clock genes in DR can provide new ideas for more comprehensive elaboration of the pathogenesis of DR and search for new therapeutic targets.
Huntington’s disease (HD) is characterized by chorea, cognitive impairment, and psychiatric symptoms. Sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances are one of the important symptoms of HD that have been gradually recognized in recent years, and have a serious impact on the quality of life of patients and their caregivers. The clinical manifestations of sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances in HD are different from those of other neurodegenerative diseases. The exact pathological mechanisms of these disturbances remain unclear and there is no specific treatment. This article reviews the current progress in the study of sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances in HD, including its pathological mechanisms, clinical manifestations, assessment methods, correlation with cognitive impairment and psychiatric symptoms, treatment and management.
Selective attention promotes the perception of brain to outside world and coordinates the allocation of limited brain resources. It is a cognitive process which relies on the neural activities of attention-related brain network. As one of the important forms of brain activities, neural oscillations are closely related to selective attention. In recent years, the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations has become a hot issue. The new method that using external rhythmic stimuli to influence neural oscillations, i.e., neural entrainment, provides a promising approach to investigate the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations. Moreover, it provides a new method to diagnose and even to treat the attention dysfunction. This paper reviewed the research status on the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations, and focused on the application prospects of neural entrainment in revealing this relationship and diagnosing, even treating the attention dysfunction.
Depression, a mental health disorder, has emerged as one of the significant challenges in the global public health domain. Investigating the pathogenesis of depression and accurately assessing the symptomatic changes are fundamental to formulating effective clinical diagnosis and treatment strategies. Utilizing non-invasive brain imaging technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and scalp electroencephalography, existing studies have confirmed that the onset of depression is closely associated with abnormal neural activities and altered functional connectivity in multiple brain regions. Magnetoencephalography, unaffected by tissue conductivity and skull thickness, boasts high spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, offering unique advantages and significant value in revealing the abnormal brain mechanisms and neural characteristics of depression. This review, starting from the rhythmic characteristics, nonlinear dynamic features, and connectivity characteristics of magnetoencephalography in depression patients, revisits the research progress on magnetoencephalography features related to depression, discusses current issues and future development trends, and provides insights for the study of pathophysiological mechanisms, as well as for clinical diagnosis and treatment of depression.
Objective To investigate the effect of circadian rhythm disorder on rat knee cartilage and the mechanism of basic helix-loop-helix ARNT like 1 (Bmal1) on the regulation of cell cycle-related genes. Methods Forty rats were randomly divided into normal group, circadian rhythm disorder group (disorder group), Bmal1 overexpression lentivirus infection circadian rhythm disorder group (Bmal1 up-regulated group) and Bmal1 overexpression lentivirus negative infection circadian rhythm disorder group (Bmal1 negative infection group), with 10 rats in each group. Saffron fast green staining, TdT-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling staining, immunohistochemical staining, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting were used to compare the pathological changes of cartilage tissue, the apoptosis of chondrocytes, and the relative mRNA expression levels of Bmal1, WEE1 G2 checkpoint kinase (Wee1), cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (Cdk1), cyclin B1 (Ccnb1), BCL2-associated X protein (Bax), apoptosis regulator 2 (Bcl2), interleukin 1 (Il1), interleukin 6 (Il6), tumor necrosis factor (Tnf) and matrix metallopeptidase 13 (Mmp13) among different groups. The relative expression levels of BMAL1, WEE1, CDK1, CCNB1, BAX and BCL2 proteins were detected, and correlation analysis was performed according to the relative expression of mRNA. Results Safranine fast green staining showed that the thickness of cartilage matrix in the normal group was normal and uniform red. The cartilage matrix in the disorder group and the Bmal1 negative infection group was destroyed, and the proteoglycan was lost obviously, showing uneven red. The thickness of cartilage matrix in the Bmal1 up-regulated group was basically normal, and the proteoglycan was not lost obviously, and the red was slightly less uniform. Compared with those of the normal group, the positive rates of apoptotic cells in articular cartilage of the disorder group and the Bmal1 negative infection group increased significantly, the mRNA and protein expression levels of Bmal1, Wee1, and Bcl2 were down-regulated, the mRNA and protein expression levels of Cdk1, Ccnb1, and Bax were up-regulated, the mRNA expression levels of Il1, Il6, Tnf and Mmp13 were up-regulated, the differences were statistically significant (P<0.05); there was no significant change in the positive rate of apoptotic cells in the articular cartilage of the Bmal1 up-regulated group, and there was no significant difference in the mRNA or protein expression of Bmal1, Wee1, Bcl2, Cdk1, Ccnb1 or Bax, nor the mRNA expression of Il1, Il6, Tnf or Mmp13 (P>0.05). Correlation analysis showed that Bmal1 was positively correlated with Wee1 and Bcl2 (r=0.84, 0.44; P<0.01), and negatively correlated with Cdk1, Ccnb1 and Bax (r=–0.55, –0.72, –0.41; P<0.01). Conclusion Chronic circadian rhythm disorder can cause the increase of chondrocyte apoptosis and osteoarthritis-like changes of articular cartilage through the expression changes of circadian clock gene Bmal1 and cell cycle-related genes and proteins.
The Chinese Guidelines on Diagnosis and Management of Atrial Fibrillation, jointly formulated by the Chinese Society of Cardiology, Chinese Medical Association and the Heart Rhythm Committee of Chinese Society of Biomedical Engineering, was first released on June 15, 2023. The guidelines elaborate the various aspects of atrial fibrillation management, in which emergency management of atrial fibrillation is also an integral part. This article interpreted the emergency management part in the guidelines in detail by reviewing relevant literature.
The main shortcomings of using electrocortical stimulation (ECS) in identifying the motor functional area around the focus in neurosurgery are certainly time-consuming, possibly cerebral cortex injuring and perhaps triggering epilepsy. To solve these problems, we in our research presented an intraoperative motor cortex functional mapping based on electrocorticography (ECoG). At first, using power spectrum estimation, we analyzed the characteristic of ECoG which was related to move task, and selected Mu rhythm as the move-related feature. Then we extracted the feature from original ECoG by multi-resolution wavelet analysis. By calculating the sum value of feature in every channel and observing the distribution of these sum values, we obtained the correlation between the cortex area under the electrode and motor cortex functional area. The results showed that the distribution of the relationship between the cortex under the electrode and motor cortex functional area was almost consistent with those identified by ECS which was called as ‘the gold-standard’. It indicated that this method was basically feasible, and it just needed five minutes totally. In conclusion, ECoG-based and passive identification of motor cortical function may serve as a useful adjunct to ECS in the intraoperative mapping.
The traditional paradigm of motor-imagery-based brain-computer interface (BCI) is abstract, which cannot effectively guide users to modulate brain activity, thus limiting the activation degree of the sensorimotor cortex. It was found that the motor imagery task of Chinese characters writing was better accepted by users and helped guide them to modulate their sensorimotor rhythms. However, different Chinese characters have different writing complexity (number of strokes), and the effect of motor imagery tasks of Chinese characters with different writing complexity on the performance of motor-imagery-based BCI is still unclear. In this paper, a total of 12 healthy subjects were recruited for studying the effects of motor imagery tasks of Chinese characters with two different writing complexity (5 and 10 strokes) on the performance of motor-imagery-based BCI. The experimental results showed that, compared with Chinese characters with 5 strokes, motor imagery task of Chinese characters writing with 10 strokes obtained stronger sensorimotor rhythm and better recognition performance (P < 0.05). This study indicated that, appropriately increasing the complexity of the motor imagery task of Chinese characters writing can obtain stronger motor imagery potential and improve the recognition accuracy of motor-imagery-based BCI, which provides a reference for the design of the motor-imagery-based BCI paradigm in the future.