Francesco Dandekar, MD

Abstract

Two patients developed bilateral, periorbital edema after initiating positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy with a full face mask. The periorbital edema was more pronounced in the morning and would dissipate throughout the day. This phenomenon seemed to be correlated with the direct pressure of the full face mask, which may have impaired lymphatic and venous drainage. To test this hypothesis, each patient was changed to a nasal pillow interface with subsequent improvement in the periorbital edema.

View details for DOI 10.1155/2015/126501

View details for PubMedID 25767727

View details for PubMedCentralID PMC4342174

Abstract

Although creativity has been called the most important of all human resources, its neural basis is still unclear. In the current study, we used fMRI to measure neural activity in participants solving a visuospatial creativity problem that involves divergent thinking and has been considered a canonical right hemisphere task. As hypothesized, both the visual creativity task and the control task as compared to rest activated a variety of areas including the posterior parietal cortex bilaterally and motor regions, which are known to be involved in visuospatial rotation of objects. However, directly comparing the two tasks indicated that the creative task more strongly activated left hemisphere regions including the posterior parietal cortex, the premotor cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the medial PFC. These results demonstrate that even in a task that is specialized to the right hemisphere, robust parallel activity in the left hemisphere supports creative processing. Furthermore, the results support the notion that higher motor planning may be a general component of creative improvisation and that such goal-directed planning of novel solutions may be organized top-down by the left DLPFC and by working memory processing in the medial prefrontal cortex.

View details for DOI 10.1093/scan/nss021

View details for Web of Science ID 000318315600017

View details for PubMedID 22349801

View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3624959