We report our experience adopting high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) tractography to define the target in the Ventralis Intermedius (Vim) nucleus in patients with essential tremor (ET). Retrospective observational cohort study on 18 consecutive Gamma Knife Stereotactic (GKRS)-thalamotomies. Dento-Rubro-Thalamo-Cortical-tract (DRTT), Cortico-spinal tract (CST) and Medial Lemniscus (ML) were reconstructed and used to adjust the coordinates-based target. The DRTT received a median maximum dose of 116 Gy (IQR 92.8-124.2 Gy) and the median volume receiving > 20 Gy (V20) was 154 mm3 (IQR 63.5-190.2 mm3). The maximum dose to the Vim was 126 Gy (IQR 126.2-127 Gy) and the median volume covered by 100 Gy was 25 mm3 (IQR 23-28-2 mm3), corresponding to the 14.5% of the whole volume (IQR 10.7-18.0%). The median Euclidean distance between the indirect (in-Vim) and adjusted Vim (ad-Vim) was 1 mm (IQR 0.7-1.9) and the final position of the ad-Vim was 1 mm cranial compared to the in-Vim (p < 0.001). Tremor improved in 15 of 18 thalamotomies (83.3%) and in all 11 cases with follow-up longer than 12 months, with a median ΔT% of 63.7% (IQR 57.4-72.3). The only prognostic factor was higher dose rate (p = 0.007), associated with faster response. No patients presented adverse radio-induced events during the follow-up. GKRS thalamotomy adopting DRTT projection, as landmark for the Vim in addition to standard coordinates, and maintaining the CST outside the 20 Gy isodose line, is effective and safe in ET.

The Organ of Corti is an organ of the inner ear located within the cochlea which contributes to audition. The Organ of Corti includes three rows of outer hair cells and one row of inner hair cells. Vibrations caused by sound waves bend the stereocilia on these hair cells via an electromechanical force. The hair cells convert mechanical energy into electrical energy that is transmitted to the central nervous system via the auditory nerve to facilitate audition.

We present a new formulation of the low-field effect (LFE) in spin-correlated radical pairs based on a zero-field singlet-triplet basis for the isotropic spin Hamiltonian. The aim is to provide a description that is both formally rigorous and mechanistically transparent, especially in the regime of weak magnetic fields such as the geomagnetic field. For the standard model radical pair containing a single spin-12 nucleus, we show that the usual electron singlet-triplet basis obscures the distinct dynamical roles of the hyperfine and Zeeman interactions. In a zero-field S-T basis constructed from the angular-momentum structure of the zero-field Hamiltonian, by contrast, the mechanism separates cleanly: isotropic hyperfine coupling mixes singlet-doublet and triplet-doublet states, whereas the weak-field Zeeman interaction mixes triplet-quartet and triplet-doublet states without directly introducing an additional singlet-triplet coupling. The LFE is, therefore, revealed as a sequential process in which a weak field unlocks access from a triplet-only manifold to a singlet-accessible triplet manifold, from which hyperfine-driven singlet-triplet interconversion can occur. We then generalize this picture to radical pairs with arbitrary isotropic hyperfine structures by identifying maximal, interior, and, when present, minimal triplet-only manifolds in the zero-field spectrum. Finally, we introduce a practical blockwise triplet-only state recruitment measure for the triplet-only zero-field state space made singlet-accessible by a weak field and show how this quantity depends on hyperfine symmetry, including the effects of equivalent nuclei. The resulting framework provides both a simple physical picture of the LFE and a general route for estimating its structural upper bound for arbitrary radical pairs.

Objective: To explore the brain functional and cognitive characteristics of schizophrenia (SZ) patients with predominant positive or negative symptoms using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). Methods: SZ patients who visited the Second Affiliated Hospital of Henan Medical University from March 2021 to June 2024 were prospectively included and evaluated with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). They were then divided into the positive symptom-dominant SZ group (SZ-Ⅰ group) and the negative symptom-dominant SZ group (SZ-Ⅱ group) based on the results. Healthy individuals were recruited from the surrounding communities as the control group. The cognitive function of SZ patients was assessed using the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB). Whole-brain rs-fMRI data was collected from all subjects, and low-frequency amplitude (ALFF), fractional ALFF (fALFF), and regional homogeneity (ReHo) were calculated. Brain regions with significant differences among the three groups were identified through inter-group comparisons and used as regions of interest (ROI) to calculate the whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) and perform inter-group comparisons. Partial correlation analysis was conducted to explore the correlations between rs-fMRI and MCCB subscale scores among the three groups. Results: The SZ-Ⅰ group included 18 males and 20 females, with an average age of (28.2±7.8) years; the SZ-Ⅱ group included 19 males and 18 females, with an average age of (30.9±6.4) years; and the control group included 16 males and 20 females, with an average age of (32.6±9.3) years. There were no significant differences in gender and age among the three groups (all P>0.05). The fALFF value of the right caudate nucleus showed significant differences among the three groups, with the SZ-Ⅰ group having a higher fALFF value than the SZ-Ⅱ group, and both SZ groups having higher fALFF values than the control group (all P<0.05, FDR corrected). The FC values from the right caudate nucleus to the right angular gyrus and the right caudate nucleus to the right inferior parietal lobule were higher in the SZ-Ⅱ group than in the SZ-Ⅰ group (all P<0.05, GRF corrected). In the SZ-Ⅰ group, the fALFF value of the right caudate nucleus was potentially negatively correlated with the maze test score (r=-0.388, PFDR=0.340), and in the SZ-Ⅱ group, the fALFF value of the right caudate nucleus was potentially negatively correlated with the spatial span test (r=-0.479, PFDR=0.100). Conclusions: There are differences in the brain functional activities and connections related to the right caudate nucleus in SZ patients with predominant positive or negative symptoms. The abnormal brain functional activities are associated with the specific cognitive impairments in SZ patients with different symptom characteristics, suggesting that the right caudate nucleus can be a potential functional imaging biomarker for differentiating SZ patients with different symptom characteristics.

A mechanistic understanding of the association between chronic pain and obesity is still lacking. One prevailing hypothesis posits that fear of movement, which would exacerbate pain, leads to a sedentary lifestyle, reducing energy expenditure and leading to weight gain. Yet evidence that chronic pain patients move less than pain-free control subjects is at best controversial. Here we test a novel hypothesis that chronic pain patients exhibit altered brain response to food within circuits driving overeating, thereby contributing to weight gain. We measured brain activity in 28 chronic low back pain (CLBP) patients and 31 pain-free healthy control (HC) subjects, matched for age, sex, and body mass index (BMI), during the consumption of a highly palatable, caloric drink with functional MRI (fMRI). The task was designed to engage the reward network, centered around the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, and amygdala, which is often altered in chronic pain patients and implicated in uncontrolled eating. Contrary to prediction, the reward network showed no significant differences between the groups. Instead, patients showed larger activations in regions normally involved in food control tasks and interoception, including the posterior-dorsal insula and primary somatosensory-motor cortex. In contrast, the right angular gyrus, a region engaged when individuals attempt to control food craving, showed reduced activity in patients compared to HC subjects. Taken together, these findings indicate that CLBP alters brain response to palatable foods in circuits that govern control of overeating. This suggests that impaired inhibitory processing, rather than exaggerated reward signaling, may underlie excessive weight gain in chronic pain patients.NEW & NOTEWORTHY It is commonly assumed that chronic pain patients gain weight because of reduced physical activity, yet this explanation remains controversial. Here, we provide evidence supporting a novel hypothesis that neural plasticity in chronic low back pain (CLBP) patients, measured with functional MRI, contributes to increased obesity risk. Specifically, we demonstrate altered brain activity in CLBP patients in response to a highly palatable drink within regions involved in sensory-motor, attentional, and interoceptive aspects of eating behavior.

Collider experiments involving nuclei provide a direct means of studying exotic states of nuclear matter. Recent measurements of energy correlators in both proton-nucleus (p-A) and nucleus-nucleus (A-A) collisions reveal sizable modifications, attributable to nuclear effects, compared to proton-proton (p-p) collisions. Energy correlators, and their associated light-ray operator product expansion (OPE), allow scaling behaviors of the measured spectrum to be directly mapped to properties of the underlying quantum field theory. Here, we demonstrate for the first time how this mapping occurs in nuclear collisions, and highlight how the light-ray OPE characterizes leading nuclear effects. We show that the leading modification to the energy correlator distribution is characterized by an enhancement of the expectation value of twist-4 light-ray operators, resulting in a scaling for the ratio of the two-point correlator in nuclear matter to that in vacuum of ∼1+aθ^{2} up to quantum corrections. We verify that this leading twist-4 correction accurately describes recent A-A and p-A data, and is thus sufficient to capture the scaling behavior within the angular range measured for jet radii used in nuclear experiments. Our light-ray OPE based approach lays the groundwork for a rigorous characterization of nuclear modification to energy correlator observables.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is regarded a potential early stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and associated with a significantly increased risk of progression to AD. This study aims to evaluate whole-brain static functional connectivity (SFC) disruptions with the default mode network (DMN) seed points in patients with MCI by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), and to explore whether these disruptions could serve as potential markers for MCI progression to AD. Retrospective rs-fMRI data with MCI (n = 36) and corresponding matched healthy controls (HCs) (n = 26) were collected for comparison. Independent component analysis (ICA) was used to extract DMN regions, and SFC was calculated for four seed points within the DMN. Two-sample t-tests were performed to compare group differences in SFC strength between the MCI and HC groups, and Pearson correlation analyses were conducted. Compared to HCs, the MCI group showed both increased and decreased SFC between four subregions and multiple brain regions, decreased SFC was more widely distributed than increased SFC. Abnormal connectivity was more prominent in the first two key nodes compared to the latter two. Affected regions primarily located in the precuneus, frontal gyri, temporal gyri, postcentral gyrus, caudate nucleus, lingual gyrus, and fusiform gyrus. The SFC value between the right angular gyrus and the right insula was significantly negatively correlated with MoCA scores (r = - 0.385, p < 0.05, FDR-corrected). It reveals a decline in the functional integration capacity within the DMN, as well as complex reorganization and abnormal connectivity patterns between the DMN and other brain networks. The altered interactions between DMN subregions and abnormal brain areas are significantly associated with episodic memory disturbance in MCI.

To investigate the structure-function coupling characteristics in patients with acute ischemic stroke affecting the left and right basal ganglia. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, include functional magnetic resonance(fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), we analyzed both whole-brain coupling and node coupling in acute ischemic stroke patients (left basal ganglia, L group; right basal ganglia, R group) and healthy controls (healthy controls, HC group). We compared coupling parameters across different groups (Total sample:89; R group sample:34, L group sample:25, HC group sample:30) and analyzed their correlation with clinical scores, such as the Fugl-Meyer Assessment. Whole-brain structural connectivity exhibited a significant positive correlation with functional connectivity across the three groups of subjects. The coupling values of structure-function coupling for the L group ranged from 0.0040 to 0.1576 (0.0631 ± 0.0389), for the R group ranged from 0.0013 to 0.2236 (0.0773 ± 0.0537), and for the HC group ranged from 0.010 to 0.2000 (0.0657 ± 0.0470). Compared to the healthy controls group, the L group exhibited significantly decreased structure-function node coupling in the following regions: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus, amygdala, cuneus, inferior occipital gyrus, caudate nucleus, globus pallidus, superior temporal gyrus, and temporal lobes and several nodes. But left putamen significantly increased. Compared to the healthy control group, the R group demonstrated significantly decreased structure-function coupling in the following nodes: insula, anterior cingulate and paracingulate cortex, angular gyrus, and precuneus. After applying FDR (false discovery rate, FDR) correction, only the Area 83 in group L exhibits a statistically significant difference at the node-level coupling on FA and on FN (p < 0.05).At the whole-brain level, only the right hemisphere SC-FC coupling (structural-functional coupling, SC-FC coupling) showed a weak correlation with the Fugl-Meyer Assessment scores (r = 0.366, p = 0.047). The structure-function coupling characteristics in acute ischemic stroke patients affecting the basal ganglia indicate a dynamic reorganization process under pathological conditions. Node coupling serves as an important metric for assessing brain network alterations, providing valuable insights into motor function and rehabilitation outcomes in clinical settings.

The Chern theorem is applied to intrinsically deformed atomic nuclei, leading to states exhibiting topological quantization of the rotation-aligned component of angular momentum averaged over Hilbert space. These topologically quantized alignment (TQA) states can emerge when collective rotation breaks intrinsic-frame time reversal symmetry, and differ fundamentally from traditional nuclear states. They exhibit formal analogies with the integer quantum Hall effect, and are a first suggestion that topological matter with novel properties might exist in nuclei. We discuss experimental signatures and speculate that TQA bulk-boundary correspondence could lead to a nuclear Chern insulator, where a rotating nucleus has an insulating bulk and unidirectional charged and uncharged currents at its surface, with detectable consequences for the energy spectrum.

In this study, an optical-model-based elastic scattering (n,el) reaction was investigated, in which a neutron was used as the projectile. The nucleon densities of the $^{127}$I were calculated and applied in the single folding method to obtain interaction potential for the neutron-$^{127}$I reaction as a function of projectile energy. The Skyrme-Hartree-Fock approach was used with the Woods-Saxon potential to calculate nucleon densities by means of the HARTREE-FOCK code. These densities were then used in the Single-Folding model to calculate neutron-$^{127}$I interaction potentials for neutron incident energies of 0.8893 MeV, 2 MeV, and 16.1 MeV. The angular differential cross sections were obtained using TALYS code, with these interaction potentials as input parameters. The evaluated nucleon-nucleus interaction potentials were found to be consistent with other theoretical values reported in the literature. The angular differential cross-section values also showed good agreement with experimental results available in the EXFOR library.