David Garcia-Garcia

• PhD
• University of Burgos

Background and purpose Adopting telemedicine (TM) enables improved access to specialized care and reduces barriers. The aim was to assess the cost‐utility of a coadjutant multidisciplinary TM programme for fall prevention compared to standard in‐office visits for individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods This was an 8‐month single‐blind r...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder whose prevalence has steadily been rising over the years. Specialist neurologists across the world assess and diagnose patients with PD, although the diagnostic process is time-consuming and various symptoms take years to appear, which means that the diagnosis is prone to human er...

Este artículo analiza la jurisprudencia existente en España relacionada con la validez de la aplicación de diferentes procedimientos conocidos como detectores de mentiras y su aceptación en procesos judiciales. Se aborda la psicología del testimonio como un antecedente que valora la credibilidad de los declarantes, pero no la veracidad de su declar...

Inflammation and oxidative stress (IOS) are considered key pathophysiological elements in the development of mental disorders. Recent studies demonstrated that the antipsychotic risperidone elicits an antiinflammatory effect in the brain. We administered risperidone for 2-weeks at adolescence to assess its role in preventing brain-related IOS chang...

COVER ILLUSTRATION This image aims to reflect the parallelism that exists between the morphometric brain changes that occur during pregnancy and those that take place during adolescence. The image has no copyright and the neurons were inspired in one of the Ramon y Cajal drawings.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in Parkinson's disease (PD) is a risk factor for dementia and thus, it is of interest to elucidate if specific patterns of atrophy in PD-MCI patients are associated with a higher risk of developing dementia. We aim to define pattern(s) of regional atrophy in PD-MCI patients who developed dementia during 31 months of...

Mapping the impact of pregnancy on the human brain is essential for understanding the neurobiology of maternal caregiving. Recently, we found that pregnancy leads to a long‐lasting reduction in cerebral gray matter volume. However, the morphometric features behind the volumetric reductions remain unexplored. Furthermore, the similarity between thes...

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgery technique widely used in movement disorders, although its mechanism of action remains unclear. In fact, apart from the stimulation itself, the mechanical insertion of the electrode may play a crucial role. Here we aimed to distinguish between the insertional and the DBS effects on brain glucose metabol...

Purpose The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) has been suggested as a possible target for deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the treatment of obesity. Our hypothesis was that NAcc-DBS would modulate brain regions related to reward and food intake regulation, consequently reducing the food intake and, finally, the weight gain. Therefore, we examined changes in...

Previous studies have associated Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with a maturational lag of brain functional networks. Functional connectivity of the human brain changes from primarily local to more distant connectivity patterns during typical development. Under the maturational lag hypothesis, we expect children with ADHD to exhibi...

Global structural brain connectivity has been reported to be sex-dependent with women having increased interhemispheric connectivity (InterHc) and men having greater intrahemispheric connectivity (IntraHc). However, (a) smaller brains show greater InterHc, (b) larger brains show greater IntraHc, and (c) women have, on average, smaller brains than m...

Pregnancy involves radical hormone surges and biological adaptations. However, the effects of pregnancy on the human brain are virtually unknown. Here we show, using a prospective ('pre'-'post' pregnancy) study involving first-time mothers and fathers and nulliparous control groups, that pregnancy renders substantial changes in brain structure, pri...

Here we analyze changes in gray matter volumes following a challenging adaptive cognitive training program based on the n-back task. Twenty-six young healthy women completed twenty-four cognitive training sessions across twelve weeks showing substantial average improvements in cognitive performance. High-resolution MRI scans were obtained before an...

OBJECTIVE Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is widely used in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). However, which target area of this region results in the highest antiparkinsonian efficacy is still a matter of debate. The aim of this study was to develop a more accurate methodology to locate the electrodes and the co...

Introduction: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and visual hallucinations (VH) are common co-morbidities and risk factors for dementia in Parkinson's disease (PD). The relative value of each of them in the progression to dementia is unknown. We investigated cognitive impairment and cerebral hypometabolism in PD-MCI patients with VH (VH-positive) and...

Neuronal failure leading to dementia in neurodegenerative diseases is evidenced in vivo by functional and structural changes in the brain such as reductions of glucose consumption and volume of grey matter. The earliest phase of cognitive decline and presymptomatic stages of these diseases are heralded by specific patterns of hypometabolism, even i...

We sought to determine whether functional connectivity streams that link sensory, attentional, and higher-order cognitive circuits are atypical in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We applied a graph-theory method to the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 120 children with ADHD and 120 age-matched typically d...

The pathophysiological process underlying cognitive decline in Parkinson's disease is not well understood. Cerebral atrophy and hypometabolism have been described in patients with Parkinson's disease and dementia or mild cognitive impairment with respect to control subjects. However, the exact relationships between atrophy and hypometabolism are st...

Oscillatory activity in the beta band is increased in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) of Parkinson's disease patients (PD). Rigidity and bradykinesia are associated with the low-beta component (13-20Hz) but the neurophysiological correlate of freezing of gait in PD has not been ascertained. We evaluated the power and coherence of the low- and high-be...

The topology of complex brain networks allows efficient dynamic interactions between spatially distinct regions. Neuroimaging studies have provided consistent evidence of dysfunctional connectivity among the cortical circuitry in Parkinson’s disease; however, little is known about the topological properties of brain networks underlying these altera...

Introduction To study the localization of the beta activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and of the contacts of the implanted electrodes for chronic stimulation providing the highest benefit (active contacts) in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Methods We recorded local field potentials in the STN through the surgically implanted electro...

Normal actions and behaviors often require inhibition of unwanted and inadequate movements. Motor inhibition has been studied using the stop signal task, in which participants are instructed to respond to a go signal. Sporadically, a stop signal is also delivered after a short interval following the go signal, prompting participants to inhibit thei...

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) may have normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia. We investigated differences in cerebral metabolism associated with these three cognitive states and the relationship between metabolism and cognitive dysfunction. FDG PET and a battery of neuropsychological tests were used to study PD pati...

White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain are associated with dementia and cognitive impairment in the general population and in Alzheimer's disease. Their effect in cognitive decline and dementia associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) is still unclear. We studied the relationship between WMHs...

We quantitatively evaluate the benefits of a higher field strength for functional brain MRI (fMRI) based on the blood oxygenation level-dependent contrast. The 3-T fMRI shows a higher sensitivity for the motor and somatosensory stimulation and more specific localization in the grey substance. The 3-T fMRI detects additional areas of activation with...

La demencia es un problema incapacitante y frecuente en la enfermedad de Parkinson (EP) avanzada. El deterioro cognitivo leve (DCL) también es prevalente (27% de pacientes con EP sin demencia) e implica un factor de riesgo para la demencia. De normales (EPCN), con deterioro cognitivo leve (EP-DCL) y con demencia (EPD).

Behavioural abnormalities such as impulse control disorders may develop when patients with Parkinson's disease receive dopaminergic therapy, although they can be controlled by deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus. We have recorded local field potentials in the subthalamic nucleus of 28 patients with surgically implanted subthalamic ele...

Unlabelled: Dopaminergic depletion in the nigrostriatal system is the neurochemical hallmark of Parkinson's disease (PD). Although numerous efforts have been made to determine the evolution of dopaminergic depletion in PD, "in vivo" data concerning the stages of this process are still scarce. We evaluated 6-[18F]-fluoro-l-DOPA ((18)F-DOPA) and 11C...

The role of the plasma level of homocysteine (Hcy), as a primary outcome, and the effect of silent cerebrovascular lesions and genetic variants related to Hcy metabolism, as secondary outcomes, in the cognitive decline and dementia in Parkinson's disease (PD) were studied. This case-control study focused on 89 PD patients of minimum 10 years of evo...

Cognitive decline and dementia are frequently observed in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Executive function is the most frequently disturbed in early stages. As the cognitive failure progresses other domains including visuospatial, memory or language are also involved. Memory deficits in PD1 have a different pattern than in other dementias (i.e Alzheime...

A high proportion of patients with Parkinson´s disease (PD) develop dementia. The profile of the cognitive deficits exhibited by these patients is different from the one typical of Alzheimer disease (AD). The brain metabolic dysfunction underlying dementia in AD is well established. In PD with dementia (PDD) some studies with SPECT 1-3 reveal a red...

Objective: To study the cerebral areas of hypometabolism and atrophy in patients with PD without cognitive impairment (PDCN), with MCI (PDMCI) and with dementia (PDD) and define the differences between the groups. Results: 57 patients and 19 controls were enrolled. General characteristics of the groups (controls, PDND, PDMCI and PDD) are summarized...

Precise placement of the electrodes for stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in Parkinson's disease (PD) is crucial for the therapeutic benefit. As a result of the mistargeting and misplacement of the electrodes during surgery in 2 patients with PD, we have characterized the neuronal firing in the red nucleus (RN) and observed the effects o...