Background: Until now little has been known about the relationship between emotion modulation through music listening habits and personality dimensions, especially in patients with mental disorders. Objective: To explore relations between the use of music in everyday life and personality dimensions in patients with mental disorders. Methods: A population of patients suffering from mental disorders (n=190) was examined using one inventory on emotion modulation by music (IAAM) and another assessing personality dimensions (SKI). Results: Patients with high ego-strength used music less for relaxation, cognitive problem solving or for reduction of negative activity, similarly patients with high orderliness used it less for cognitive problem solving or for reduction of negative activity, but patients with high confidence used music more for fun stimulation. Patients who reported that they listened to music which improved their symptoms of mental illness showed more ego-strength and orderliness than patients who listened to music that worsened their emotional condition. Conclusions: The study suggests that the personality variables confidence, ego-strength and orderliness are variables for the use of music in a helpful way for emotion modulation.

Purpose: We investigate the ability of adults with and without visual impairment estimate distances between stimuli in real environment. Methods: We evaluated 12 subjects aged between 20 and 40 years in which 6 subjects with normal vision (mean age=31.0, SD=6.5), and 6 subjects with visual impairment (mean age=27.7, SD=7.8). Two styrofoam balls of 10cm in diameter were used, painted in black and a line of white velcro of 3.5 meters was fixed in the floor of a hallway without lateral references. Psychophysical scaling was evaluated by magnitude estimation and the exponent of the Stevens law was calculated. Results: The calculated exponent for the controls was 1.13 for near judgment and 1.11 for far distances. The low vision group showed exponent values of 1.01 for near and 0.96 for far distances judgment. There was a statistical difference for 120cm of distance between balls for near (F10=88.21, p<0.001) and a tendency to difference for 200cm (F10=3.81, p=0.079) between groups. Conclusions: Our scaling procedure shows that despite the reduction in the distance judged by the low vision subjects, their internal representation of space is preserved. Similar exponent values indicates that their suprathreshold impression of the distance follow the same rules of the normal subject.

A 72-Year-old female with a history of migraine headaches presented with an acute onset of expressive aphasia, difficulty with memory and worsening of her headaches. An MRI of the brain was done which revealed diffuse white matter T2 hyperintensities (Figures 1). Due to worsening of the patient’s clinical symptoms a repeat MRI was performed four days later that revealed multiple micro-bleeds (Figure 2), as well as a lobar hemorrhage in left temporal lobe (Figure 2). An extensive workup including HIV testing, CSF examination for infectious etiology including protein 14-3-3 and demylineating disease was negative. Paraneoplastic and autoimmune workup was also non-diagnostic. A brain biopsy was performed due to the extensive white matter disease, which revealed Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy (CAA) with focal granulomatous angiitis. The patient was treated with intravenous steroids with no significant improvement clinically. Two months after diagnosis, her disease course has remained static, without improvement or deterioration.

A 57 year old female with history of diabetes mellitus, diabetic peripheral neuropathy and scoliosis with four previous spinal fusions (T4 to pelvis) presented with worsening ambulating for the past one month. She was previously at baseline ambulating with a walker.

Background: Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is an important cause of intracerebral hemorrhage. Brain amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA) can be classified into two groups; those with edema or sulcal effacement (ARIA-E) and those with cerebral microbleeds or small hemorrhages (ARIA-H). There is an aggressive form of CAA, called CAA-related inflammation (CAA-ri) which is characterized by vascular or perivascular inflammation. Current treatment guidelines do not recommend routine use of steroids for intraparenchymal hemorrhage. Methods: We describe the clinical course, radiologic and pathologic findings of a 78-year-old man with recurrent intracerebral hemorrhage. Diagnostic studies included CT and MRI-scans of the brain, histopathology studies and autopsy. Results: The patient was diagnosed with a vasculitic form of amyloid angiopathy. Treatment with steroids resulted in clinical and radiological improvement. Conclusions: There might be a benefit of steroid or other immunosuppressive therapy in some patients with recurrent lobar hemorrhage related to CAA. Patients demonstrating edema out of proportion to the size of hematoma and extension of edema to the sub-cortical U fibers on imaging studies due to underlying vasculitis or CAA-ri may be candidates for such therapeutic interventions.