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In this Review, Hoppe and Elger discuss the etiological factors underlying depression as a comorbidity of epilepsy, comprising psychological factors such as learned helplessness and the 'burden of epilepsy', and neurobiological factors directly related to the seizures. The authors highlight the need for more clinical studies of antidepressants and psychotherapy, and emphasize the importance of an integrated approach to treatment that addresses both the psychological and the neurobiological factors. Depression is a serious and frequent comorbidity of epilepsy and other neurological conditions. Here, we review recent studies on the relationship between epilepsy and depression with regard to diagnostic criteria, epidemiology, etiology and treatment. Depression in epilepsy can be described in the general framework of the diathesis–stress model: chronic stress exposure owing to the 'burden of epilepsy' and learned helplessness due to the threat of recurrent seizures as unpredictable aversive events represent psychological risk factors for the development of depression. Epilepsy-related factors (for example, focus site or side) have shown little effect on mood. Nonepileptic individuals who are adversely affected by seizures (for example, parents of pediatric patients with epilepsy, and patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures) show increased levels of depression, similar to patients with epilepsy. However, seizures, subclinical hypersynchronous neural discharges and some antiepileptic drugs may cause acute states of depressive mood or depression on a purely neurobiological basis. Antidepressant drugs and psychotherapy have shown moderate efficacy in the treatment of depression comorbidity, but randomized controlled trials in patients with epilepsy are lacking, especially for drugs. Key Points Depression is a frequent comorbidity of epilepsy Depression comorbidity in epilepsy can be explained in the framework of the diathesis–stress model Seizures, subclinical hypersynchronous neural discharges and some antiepileptic drugs may cause acute states of depressive mood on a purely neurobiological basis Nonepileptic individuals who are adversely affected by seizures (for example, parents of pediatric patients, and patients with psychogenic seizures) show elevated levels of depression, similar to patients with epilepsy Antidepressants and psychotherapy seem to have a comparable, moderate antidepressant effect, but randomized controlled trials are lacking, particularly for drugs More-comprehensive approaches to the understanding and treatment of depression and suicidality in epilepsy, which combine drug treatment with psychotherapy and rehabilitative care, need to be developed

Purpose Multimodal therapies have significantly improved prognosis in glioma. However, in particular radiotherapy may induce long-term neurotoxicity compromising patients’ neurocognition and quality of life. The present prospective multicenter study aimed to evaluate associations of multimodal treatment with neurocognition with a particular focus on hippocampal irradiation. Methods Seventy-one glioma patients (WHO grade 1–4) were serially evaluated with neurocognitive testing and quality of life questionnaires. Prior to (baseline) and following further treatment (median 7.1 years [range 4.6–11.0] after baseline) a standardized computerized neurocognitive test battery (NeuroCog FX) was applied to gauge psychomotor speed and inhibition, verbal short-term memory, working memory, verbal and non-verbal memory as well as verbal fluency. Mean ipsilateral hippocampal radiation dose was determined in a subgroup of 27 patients who received radiotherapy according to radiotherapy plans to evaluate its association with neurocognition. Results Between baseline and follow-up mean performance in none of the cognitive domains significantly declined in any treatment modality (radiotherapy, chemotherapy, combined radio-chemotherapy, watchful-waiting), except for selective attention in patients receiving chemotherapy alone. Apart from one subtest (inhibition), mean ipsilateral hippocampal radiation dose > 50 Gy (Dmean) as compared to < 10 Gy showed no associations with long-term cognitive functioning. However, patients with Dmean < 10 Gy showed stable or improved performance in all cognitive domains, while patients with > 50 Gy numerically deteriorated in 4/8 domains. Conclusions Multimodal glioma therapy seems to affect neurocognition less than generally assumed. Even patients with unilateral hippocampal irradiation with > 50 Gy showed no profound cognitive decline in this series.

The Chemistry Development Kit (CDK) provides methods for common tasks in molecular informatics, including 2D and 3D rendering of chemical structures, I/O routines, SMILES parsing and generation, ring searches, isomorphism checking, structure diagram generation, etc. Implemented in Java, it is used both for server-side computational services, possibly equipped with a web interface, as well as for applications and client-side applets. This article introduces the CDKs new QSAR capabilities and the recently introduced interface to statistical software.

This paper describes a new measurement method (VS model) for determining the quality of online video services relying on modern H.265/HEVC and VP9 codecs. The said method has been developed on the basis of VQuad-HD curves (according to ITU-T J.341). This model does not refer to signal analysis, but protocol analysis instead. The parameters used are: type of video codec, encoding rate, transport technique, packet loss and burst size. The method may be implemented quickly and easily, which is one of the great advantages when using this method to measure QoS.

Epileptic seizures vary greatly in clinical phenomenology and can markedly affect the patient's quality of life. As therapeutic interventions focus on reduction or elimination of seizures, the accurate documentation of seizure occurrence is essential. However, patient self-evaluation compared with objective evaluation by video-electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring or long-term ambulatory EEG revealed that patients document fewer than 50% of their seizures, on average, and that documentation accuracy varies significantly over time. For good clinical practice in epilepsy, novel and feasible seizure detection techniques for ambulatory long-term use are needed. Generalised tonic-clonic seizures can already be detected reliably by methods that rely on motion recording (eg, surface electromyography). However, the automatic detection of other seizure types, such as complex partial seizures, will require multimodal approaches that combine the measurement of ictal autonomic alterations (eg, heart rate) and of characteristic movement patterns (eg, accelerometry). Innovative and feasible tools for automatic seizure detection are likely to advance both monitoring of the outcome of a treatment in a patient and clinical research in epilepsy.

Application of auditory beat stimulation has been speculated to provide a promising new tool with which to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and to enhance cognition. In spite of reportedly similar EEG effects of binaural and monaural beats, data on behavioral effects of monaural beats are still lacking. Therefore, we examined the impact of monaural beat stimulation on anxiety, mood and memory performance. We aimed to target states related to anxiety levels and general well-being, in addition to long-term and working memory processes, using monaural beats within the range of main cortical rhythms. Theta (6 Hz), alpha (10 Hz) and gamma (40 Hz) beat frequencies, as well as a control stimulus were applied to healthy participants for 5 min. After each stimulation period, participants were asked to evaluate their current mood state and to perform cognitive tasks examining long-term and working memory processes, in addition to a vigilance task. Monaural beat stimulation was found to reduce state anxiety. When evaluating responses for the individual beat frequencies, positive effects on state anxiety were observed for all monaural beat conditions compared to control stimulation. Our results indicate a role for monaural beat stimulation in modulating state anxiety and are in line with previous studies reporting anxiety-reducing effects of auditory beat stimulation.

Purpose Cognitive functioning represents an essential determinant of quality of life. Since significant advances in neuro-oncological treatment have led to prolonged survival it is important to reliably identify possible treatment-related neurocognitive dysfunction in brain tumor patients. Therefore, the present study specifically evaluates the effects of standard treatment modalities on neurocognitive functions in glioma patients within two years after surgery. Methods Eighty-six patients with World Health Organization (WHO) grade 1–4 gliomas were treated between 2004 and 2012 and prospectively followed within the German Glioma Network. They received serial neuropsychological assessment of attention, memory and executive functions using the computer-based test battery NeuroCog FX. As the primary outcome the extent of change in cognitive performance over time was compared between patients who received radiotherapy, chemotherapy or combined radio-chemotherapy and patients without any adjuvant therapy. Additionally, the effect of irradiation and chemotherapy was assessed in subgroup analyses. Furthermore, the potential impact of the extent of tumor resection and histopathological characteristics on cognitive functioning were referred to as secondary outcomes. Results After a median of 16.8 (range 5.9–31.1) months between post-surgery baseline neuropsychological assessment and follow-up assessment, all treatment groups showed numerical and often even statistically significant improvement in all cognitive domains. The extent of change in cognitive functioning showed no difference between treatment groups. Concerning figural memory only, irradiated patients showed less improvement than non-irradiated patients ( p  = 0.029, η 2  = 0.06). Resected patients, yet not patients with biopsy, showed improvement in all cognitive domains. Compared to patients with astrocytomas, patients with oligodendrogliomas revealed a greater potential to improve in attentional and executive functions. However, the heterogeneity of the patient group and the potentially selected cohort may confound results. Conclusion Within a two-year post-surgery interval, radiotherapy, chemotherapy or their combination as standard treatment did not have a detrimental effect on cognitive functions in WHO grade 1–4 glioma patients. Cognitive performance in patients with adjuvant treatment was comparable to that of patients without.

Cerebral lesions may cause degeneration and neuroplastic reorganization in both the ipsi- and the contralesional hemisphere, presumably creating an imbalance of primarily inhibitory interhemispheric influences produced via transcallosal pathways. The two hemispheres are thought to mutually hamper neuroplastic reorganization of the other hemisphere. The results of preceding degeneration and neuroplastic reorganization of white matter may be reflected by Diffusion Tensor Imaging-derived diffusivity parameters such as fractional anisotropy (FA). In this study, we applied Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) to contrast the white matter status of the contralesional hemisphere of young lesioned brains with and without contralateral influences by comparing patients after hemispherotomy to those who had not undergone neurosurgery. DTI was applied to 43 healthy controls (26 females, mean age±SD: 25.07±11.33 years) and to two groups of in total 51 epilepsy patients with comparable juvenile brain lesions (32 females, mean age±SD: 25.69±12.77 years) either after hemispherotomy (30 of 51 patients) or without neurosurgery (21 of 51 patients), respectively. FA values were compared between these groups using the unbiased tract-based spatial statistics approach. A voxel-wise ANCOVA controlling for age at scan yielded significant group differences in FA. A post-hoc t-test between hemispherotomy patients and healthy controls revealed widespread supra-threshold voxels in the contralesional hemisphere of hemispherotomy patients indicating comparatively higher FA values (p<0.05, FWE-corrected). The non-surgery group, in contrast, showed extensive supra-threshold voxels indicating lower FA values in the contralesional hemisphere as compared to healthy controls (p<0.05, FWE-corrected). Whereas lower FA values are suggestive of pronounced contralesional degeneration in the non-surgery group, higher FA values in the hemispherotomy group may be interpreted as result of preceding plastic remodeling. We conclude that, whether juvenile brain lesions are associated with contralesional degeneration or reorganization partly depends on the ipsilesional hemisphere. Contralesional reorganization as observed in hemispherotomy patients was most likely enabled by the complete neurosurgical deafferentation of the ipsilesional hemisphere and, thereby, the disinhibition of the neuroplastic potential of the contralesional hemisphere. The main argument of this study is that hemispherotomy may be seen as a major plastic stimulus and as a prerequisite for contralesional neuroplastic remodeling in patients with juvenile brain lesions.

Today’s Internet knows no bounds. New applications are marketed every single day. Many of them incorporate video sequences. These must be transported over the Internet quickly (often in real time). However, the Internet has not been designed for live communications and, regrettably, this may become apparent all too quickly. Countermeasures are required in the form of new, efficient transport techniques facilitating online video services. MPEG-DASH is one of such modern techniques. But how good is this new technique really? This paper delves into the matter. The paper contains an analysis of the impact that the new technology exerts on the quality of video streaming over IP networks. It also describes a new numerical tool – QoSCalc (DASH-HTTP) which has been used to analyze MPEG-DASH under different use scenarios. The results are presented graphically and their interpretation is provided