Jean Faber

Universidade Federal de São Paulo | UNIFESP · Departamento de Neurologia e Neurocirurgia

Objective: To evaluate the effects of Lower Extremity - Constraint Induced Movement Therapy on gait function and balance in chronic hemiparetic patients. Methods: Randomized, controlled, single-blinded study. We recruited chronic post stroke patients and allocated them to Lower Extremity - Constraint Induced Movement Tharapy (LE-CIMT) or Control...

Epilepsy affects millions of people worldwide every year and remains an open subject for research. Current development on this field has focused on obtaining computational models to better understand its triggering mechanisms, attain realistic descriptions and study seizure suppression. Controllers have been successfully applied to mitigate epilept...

Data-driven and dynamic models have been proposed to better understand and describe epileptiform activities. However, there is still a need for more comprehensive ones suitable for individual seizures from patients but also general across them, taking into account common features. Thus, this work proposes an alternative nonlinear autoregressive mod...

Introduction The paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN) contains premotor neurons involved in the control of sympathetic vasomotor activity. It is known that the stimulation of specific areas of the PVN can lead to distinct response patterns at different target territories. The underlying mechanisms, however, are still unclear. Recent ev...

Human-machine interfaces (HMIs) can be used to decode a user's motor intention to control an external device. People that suffer from motor disabilities, such as spinal cord injury, can benefit from the uses of these interfaces. While many solutions can be found in this direction, there is still room for improvement both from a decoding, hardware,...

The activation of specific brain areas involved in regulating the vasomotor sympathetic activity can lead to distinct effects in the postganglionic nerves in both physiological and pathological conditions, suggesting that the sympathetic vasomotor activity is differentially coded depending on the nerve outflow and the target organs. Previous studie...

Epilepsy affects millions of people worldwide every year and remains an open subject for research. Current development on this field has focused on obtaining computational models to better understand its triggering mechanisms, attain realistic descriptions and study seizure suppression. Controllers have been successfully applied to mitigate epilept...

Purpose One of the main causes of long-term prosthetic abandonment is the lack of ownership over the prosthesis, which was caused mainly by the absence of sensory information regarding the lost limb. The period where the patient learns how to interact with a prosthetic device is critical in rehabilitation. This ideally happens within the first mont...

Data-driven and dynamic models have been proposed to better understand and describe epileptiform activities. However, there is still a need for more comprehensive ones suitable for individual seizures from patients but also general across them, taking into account common features. Thus, this work proposes an alternative nonlinear autoregressive mod...

Spinal cord injury (SCI) can lead to sensory-motor loss and multiple organ dysfunction, affecting different dimensions of patient well-being. The treatment consists of rehabilitation to help the individual maximize their function and use assistive devices to control devices such as computers, wheelchairs , or environmental management of systems. Re...

Cross-frequency coupling (CFC) mechanisms play a central role in brain activity. Pathophysiological mechanisms leading to many brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), may produce unique patterns of brain activity detectable by electroencephalography (EEG). Identifying biomarkers for AD diagnosis is also an ambition among research teams w...

Therapeutic strategies capable of inducing and enhancing prosthesis embodiment are a key point for better adaptation to and acceptance of prosthetic limbs. In this study, we developed a training protocol using an EMG-based human-machine interface (HMI) that was applied in the preprosthetic rehabilitation phase of people with amputation. This is a c...

Objective To evaluate the relationship between the oculomotor nerve (CNIII) and the internal carotid artery (ICA) as a new anatomic-radiologic landmark for distinguishing the exact location of a paraclinoid intracranial aneurysm (IA). Methods Microanatomic dissections were performed in 20 cavernous sinuses to evaluate the ICA paraclinoid region. B...

For a better rescuing of people with disabilities, it is crucial the development of new assistive technologies and therapeutic methods to rehabilitate people with some disabilities to integrate them to a complete social life. A very promising tool is the physiological self-regulation protocols based on biofeedback training. Biofeedback protocols ar...

The hippocampal (HP) formation is a vital component of the central nervous system in processing memory, learning, and spatial navigation. Existing methods are obsolete to address new emerging questions as our understanding of HP circuits and its connections advances. Hence, there is a need for new techniques with an accessible approach for visualiz...

Activity-dependent self-organization plays an important role in the formation of specific and stereotyped connectivity patterns in neural circuits. By combining neuronal cultures, and tools with approaches from network neuroscience and information theory, we can study how complex network topology emerges from local neuronal interactions. We constru...

The types of epileptiform activity occurring in the sclerotic hippocampus with highest incidence are interictal-like events (II) and periodic ictal spiking (PIS). These activities are classified according to their event rates, but it is still unclear if these rate differences are consequences of underlying physiological mechanisms. Identifying new...

Epilepsy is one of the most common brain disorders worldwide, afecting millions of people every year. Given the partially successful existing treatments for epileptiform activity suppression, dynamic mathematical models have been proposed with the purpose of better understanding the factors that might trigger an epileptic seizure and how to mitigat...

Objectives This study aimed to assess the impact of the laparoscopic implantation of neuromodulation electrodes (Possover-LION procedure) on mobility and on sexual, urinary, and anorectal functions of people with chronic spinal cord injury (SCI). Material and Methods Longitudinal analysis of 30 patients with chronic SCI (21 ASIA impairment scale (...

Approximately 70% of women with epilepsy experience additional challenges in seizure exacerbation due to hormonal changes, particularly during fluctuations of estrogen-progesterone levels in the menstrual cycle, which is known as catamenial epilepsy. In animal models of epilepsy, a sustained increase in seizure frequency has been observed in female...

For a better rescuing of people with disabilities, it is crucial the development of new assistive technologies and therapeutic methods to rehabilitate people with some disabilities to integrate them to a complete social life. A very promising tool is the physiological self-regulation protocols based on biofeedback training. Biofeedback protocols ar...

The heart rate variability (HRV) is the difference between consecutive R-R intervals of heartbeats measured in milliseconds. HRV indices represent the role of sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic branches. Even though HRV is considered an indirect biomarker of Autonomic Nervous System, there are not yet standardized protocols providing reliabl...

A classic method to evaluate autonomic dysfunction is through the evaluation of heart rate variability (HRV). HRV provides a series of coefficients, such as Standard Deviation of n-n intervals (SDNN) and Root Mean Square of Successive Differences (RMSSD), which have well-established physiological associations. However, using only electrocardiogram...

Background: Clinical and pre-clinical studies indicate a reduction in seizure frequency as well as a decrease in susceptibility to subsequently evoked seizures after physical exercise programs. In contrast to the influence of exercise after epilepsy previously established, various studies have been conducted attempting to investigate whether physic...

Epilepsy is one of the most common brain disorders worldwide, affecting millions of people every year. Although significant effort has been put into better understanding it and mitigating its effects, the conventional treatments are not fully effective. Advances in computational neuroscience, using mathematical dynamic models that represent brain a...

Deafblindness is the condition in which a person has little or no useful hearing and vision. The dysfunction in both senses can occur in different ways and degrees for each person. These differences impose specific barriers and strategies for the rehabilitation of this public, regarding protocols and assistive devices. Most of the technologies and...

There are no clinical interventions to prevent post-injury epilepsy, a common and devastating outcome after brain insults. Epileptogenic events that run from brain injury to epilepsy are poorly understood. Previous studies in our laboratory suggested Proechimys, an exotic Amazonian rodent, as resistant to acquired epilepsy development in post-statu...

Background: The embodiment of a prosthesis can bring a series of benefits during the rehabilitation of people with amputation, such as improvement of motor control and sense of agency, in addition to optimizing the training process with the prosthetic limb. New therapeutic strategies capable of enhancing prosthesis embodiment are, therefore, a key...

A classic method to evaluate autonomic dysfunction is through the evaluation of heart rate variability (HRV). HRV provides a series of coefficients, such as SDNN (Standard Deviation of n-n intervals) and RMSSD (Root Mean Square of Successive Differences), which have well-established physiological associations. However, using only electrocardiogram...

The heart rate variability (HRV) is the difference between consecutive R-R intervals of heartbeats measured in milliseconds. HRV indices represent the role of sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic branches. Even though HRV is considered an indirect biomarker of Autonomic Nervous System, there are not yet standardized protocols providing reliabl...

Mounting evidence implicates dysfunctional GABA A R-mediated neurotransmission as one of the underlying causes of learning and memory deficits observed in the Ts65Dn mouse model of Down syndrome (DS). The specific origin and nature of such dysfunction is still under investigation, which is an issue with practical consequences to preclinical and cli...

Objective: The aim of the present study was to compare the molecular and morphological effects of diacerein and glucosamine-chondroitin drug treatment and intra-articular injection therapy of human deciduous dental pulp stem cells (hDPSCs) in a rat knee model of induced osteoarthritis (OA). Materials and methods: Thirty-six adult male rats were...

Epilepsy is one of the most common brain disorders worldwide, affecting millions of people every year. Given the partially successful existing treatments for epileptiform activity suppression, dynamic mathematical models have been proposed with the purpose of better understanding the factors that might trigger an epileptic seizure and how to mitiga...

Background: Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a complex disorder that affects the cardiovascular system, and it is generally associated with mental and metabolic health issues. To diagnose MetS it is essential to identify certain comorbidities related to cardiovascular diseases. Hypothyroidism, for instance, is a common disorder that reduces the basal m...

One of the main causes of long-term prosthetic abandonment is the lack of ownership over the prosthesis, caused mainly by the absence of sensory information regarding the lost limb. One strategy to overcome this problem is to provide alternative feedback mechanisms to convey information respective to the absent limb. To address this issue, we devel...

This article introduces the first dataset of 1H- nuclear magnetic resonance - based metabolomic spectroscopy of saliva samples from women with temporomandibular disorders (TMD) of muscular origin. Our data generated a metabolomic profile for TMD of muscular origin. The samples were separated in two groups: Experimental Group (EG) represented by wom...

Ludwig Boltzmann is one of the foremost responsible for the development of modern atomism in thermodynamics. His proposition was revolutionary not only because it brought a new vision for Thermodynamics, merging a statistical approach with Newtonian physics, but also because he produced an entirely new perspective on the way of thinking about and d...

The actual COVID-19 pandemic – disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus – has already caused thousands of death in the year 2020. Among the various disorders that may occur throughout the disease’s course, there are also disorders of the central nervous system. In order to investigate the potential effects of neural involvement in the novel coronavir...

In recent years, new and important perspectives were introduced in the field of neuroimaging with the emergence of the connectionist approach [136]. In this new context, it is important to know not only which brain areas are activated by a particular stimulus but, mainly, how these areas are structurally and functionally connected, distributed, and...

Although temporomandibular disorder (TMD) is the second most common musculoskeletal disorder in the general population, the disease is multifactorial and presents symptoms common to other conditions; misdiagnosis can lead to treatment failure. In this case-control study, we performed, for the first time, a high-resolution ¹H-nuclear magnetic resona...

Epilepsy affects about 70 million people in the world. Every year, approximately 2.4 million people are diagnosed with epilepsy, two-thirds of them will not know the etiology of their disease, and 1% of these individuals will decease as a consequence of it. Due to the inherent complexity of predicting and explaining it, the mathematical model Epile...

Importance Vitreoretinal surgery can be technically challenging and is limited by physiologic characteristics of the surgeon. Factors that improve accuracy and precision of the vitreoretinal surgeon are invaluable to surgical performance. Objectives To establish weight-adjusted cutoffs for caffeine and β-blocker (propranolol) intake and to determi...

Modulation of brain activity is one of the main mechanisms capable of demonstrating the synchronization dynamics of neural oscillations. In epilepsy, modulation is a key concept since seizures essentially result from neural hypersynchronization and hyperexcitability. In this study, we have introduced a time-dependent index based on the Kullback-Lei...

The knowledge of the central areas involved in the control of sympathetic vasomotor activity has been advanced in the last few decades. The γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the mainly inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammal central nervous system and bicuculline, an antagonist of GABA type A receptors (GABA‐A), microinjected into the paraventricular...

This study was designed to evaluate the anti-inflammatory effects of a curcumin treatment on the knee of rats with induced osteoarthritis. Fifteen adult rats were used and divided in three groups: the osteoarthritis group (OAG), control group (CG–without induction of osteoarthritis), and curcumin-treated osteoarthritis group (COAG). Osteoarthritis...

Neuroinflammation has been shown to play a crucial role in the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and also has an association with amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques, a hallmark of this disease. Physical exercise has emerged as an alternative treatment for pathological impairment in AD. In light of this evidence, together with the fact that the hippocampu...

Background Knowledge of the central areas involved in the control of sympathetic vasomotor activity has advanced in the last few decades. γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammal nervous system, and a microinjection of bicuculline, an antagonist of GABA type A (GABA-A) receptors, into the paraventricular nucl...

The ownership feeling of our body occurs mainly due to feedback responses in real-time from environment stimuli to our own body. These constant feedbacks induce a neuronal arrangement, generating a representative map and, consequently, an ownership and unity feeling, named as a body schema. Although there is a relative well knowing of the sensorial...

[https://repositorio.unifesp.br/handle/11600/59909] (EN) We report the development of an Integrated Biofeedback system for the rehabilitation of Transfemural Amputees during the phase of Preprosthetic training. Our main objective developing this systema is to apply it as a rehabilitation tool, providing amputee people with an alternative to bypass...

After Alzheimer, Parkinson disease (PD) is the most frequently occurring progressive, degenerative neurological disease. It affects both sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in a variable fashion. Cardiovascular symptoms are present in almost all stages of PD and narrower heart rate variability is the earliest sign. Administration of Lev...

In recent years, new and important perspectives were introduced in the field of neuroimaging with the emergence of the connectionist approach. In this new context, it is important to know not only which brain areas are activated by a particular stimulus but, mainly, how these areas are structurally and functionally connected, distributed, and organ...

Pre-eclampsia (PE) affects approximately 2 to 8% of pregnant women, causing blood pressure above 140 × 90 mmHg and proteinuria, normally after the 20th gestation week. If unsuccessfully treated, PE can lead to self-limited seizures (Eclampsia) that could eventually result in death of the mother and her fetus. The present study reports an experiment...

Background Pre-eclampsia affects approximately 2–8% of pregnant women, causing proteinuria and blood pressure above 140 × 90 mmHg after the 20th week of gestation. If left untreated, PE can lead to the occurrence of self-sustained seizures (Eclampsia) that could eventually evolve to coma, and death of the mother and fetus. In the present study, an...

Human hippocampal slice preparations from patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) associated with hippocampal sclerosis (HS) are excellent material for the characterization of epileptiform-like activity. However, it is still unknown if hippocampal regions as cornu Ammonis (CA) 1, CA3 and CA4, generate population epileptiform-like activity. He...

Purpose: To assess the anticonvulsant effects of the antiepileptic drug lacosamide on epileptiform activity induced in human neocortical and hippocampal slices. Method: This study was performed on surgically resected hippocampal and neocortical tissue of 11 patients with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Using in vitro electrophysiology...

Spreading Depression (SD) consists on a wave of depressed neural, electrical, activity and near complete depolarization of large neuron populations. It is believed to occur both in compromised and healthy tissue from a broad range of animal species and every structure of the gray matter. Glutamate is long been known to be involved in the ignition o...

The ownership feeling of our body occurs mainly due to feedback responses in real-time from environment stimuli to our own body. These constant feedbacks induce a neuronal arrangement, generating a representative map and, consequently, an ownership and unity feeling, named as a body schema. Although there is a relative well knowing of the sensorial...

The ownership feeling of our body occurs mainly due to feedback responses in real-time from environment stimuli to our own body. These constant feedbacks induce a neuronal arrangement, generating a representative map and, consequently, an ownership and unity feeling, named as a body schema. Although there is a relative well knowing of the sensorial...

Recovering of people suffering from spinal cord and brain lesion is a medical challenge. Brain-machine interface (BMI) emerges as a potential candidate, by allowing patients to use their own brain activity to reestablish sensorimotor control of paralyzed body parts. BMI can be divided in two main groups: non-invasive, based in the capture of the ne...

In the course of the history of science, some concepts have forged theoretical foundations, constituting paradigms that hold sway for substantial periods of time. Research on the history of explanations of the action of one body on another is a testament to the periodic revival of one theory in particular, namely, the theory of ether. Even after th...

Recently, the N-way partial least squares (NPLS) approach was reported as an effective tool for neuronal signal decoding and brain-computer interface (BCI) system calibration. This method simultaneously analyzes data in several domains. It combines the projection of a data tensor to a low dimensional space with linear regression. In this paper the...

The development of therapeutic approaches to improve the life quality of people suffering from different types of body paralysis is a current major medical challenge. Brain-machine interface (BMI) can potentially help reestablishing lost sensory and motor functions, allowing patients to use their own brain activity to restore sensorimotor control o...

Despite the many advances of neuroscience, the functioning of telencephalic neuronal ensembles during natural behavior remains elusive. The analysis of continuous data from large neuronal populations recorded over many hours across various behavioral states presents practical and theoretical challenges, including an ever-increasing demand for compu...

Even though there is great regional variation in the distribution of inhibitory neurons in the mammalian isocortex, relatively little is known about their morphological differences across areal borders. To obtain a better understanding of particularities of inhibitory circuits in cortical areas that correspond to different sensory modalities, we in...

Multielectrode implantation. Figure showing the procedure of multielectrode implantation. In our surgeries the connector of the electrode array always stayed above the cranium, in order to prevent any alteration in the cortical mantle (zoomed at the right side). (TIF)

Relative LFP power across distinct frequency bands varies little over time, and does not differ between channels with or without spike signals. The top panels depict raw LFP signals recorded at different time points (weeks), obtained from channels with or without spike signals (red and blue lines, respectively). The remaining panels show the tempor...

Multielectrodes have been used with great success to simultaneously record the activity of neuronal populations in awake, behaving animals. In particular, there is great promise in the use of this technique to allow the control of neuroprosthetic devices by human patients. However, it is crucial to fully characterize the tissue response to the chro...

Recently N-way Partial Least Squares (NPLS) were reported as an effective tool for neuronal signal decoding and BCI system calibration. This method simultaneously analyses data in several domains. It is based on the projection of a data tensor to a low dimensional space using all variables to create a final model. In the present paper the L1-Penali...

Cortical areas that directly receive sensory inputs from the thalamus were long thought to be exclusively dedicated to a single modality, originating separate labeled lines. In the past decade, however, several independent lines of research have demonstrated cross-modal responses in primary sensory areas. To investigate whether these responses repr...

The goal of the present article is to compare different classifiers using multi-modal data analysis in a binary self-paced BCI. Individual classifiers were applied to multi-modal neuronal data which was projected to a low dimensional space of latent variables using the Iterative N-way Partial Least Squares algorithm. To create a multi-way feature a...

Um dos grandes objetivos das pesquisas biomédicas atualmente envolve o desenvolvimento de métodos que permitam a recuperaçáo de funções que foram perdidas por pessoas acometidas por acidentes traumáticos ou doenças degenerativas. Nessa direçáo, um campo de pesquisa bastante promissor é o desenvolvimento de próteses mecânicas integradas a dispositiv...

We analyze the necessary physical conditions to model an open quantum system as a quantum game. By applying the formalism of quantum operations on a particular system, we use Kraus operators as quantum strategies. The physical interpretation is a conflict among different configurations of the environment. The resolution of the conflict displays reg...

Models of the mind are based on the idea that neuron microtubules can perform computation. From this point of view, information processing is the fundamental issue for understanding the brain mechanisms that produce consciousness. The cytoskeleton polymers could store and process information through their dynamic coupling mediated by mechanical ene...

Quantum models of the mind associate consciousness with coherent superposition of states in the brain. Some authors consider consciousness to be the result of a kind of internal quantum measurement process in the brain. In this paper we discuss the ideas of Hameroff-Penrose and Tegmark and their calculation for an estimate of decoherence time. We c...

We analyze the necessary physical conditions to model an open quan- tum system as a quantum game. By applying the formalism of Quantum Opera- tions on a specific system, we describe the environmental interaction as quantum channels introducing noises in the principal system. The game interpretation is a conflict among different configurations of th...

There has been a growing interest in articial neural networks (ANNs) based on quantum theoretical concepts and techniques due to cognitive science and computer science aspects. The so called Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) is an exciting area of research in the eld of quantum computation and quantum information. However, a key question about QNNs is...

In this paper we consider the situation where we do not know a linear operator but instead have only a set of example functional points of the form such that . This problem can be analysed from the viewpoint of numerical linear algebra or learning algorithms. The later is the focus of this work. Firstly, we present a method found in the literature...