International Clinical Neuroscience Journal

Pregnancy-related lumbopelvic pain has been a serious and common problem since ancient time. The present review article focuses on terminology, types, clinical presentation, and management of these problems.

There are two entities regarding pregnancy-related lumbopelvic pain: pelvic girdle pain (PGP)’’, and pregnancy-related low back pain (PLBP). There are multiple mechanisms behind these disabilities.

Age, multiparty, heavy weight lifting, hard physical activity, previous low back pain, and low education increase the prevalence. About one-half of women with pregnancy-related lumbopelvic pain have PGP, one-third LBP, and one-sixth have both conditions. Overall, the literature reveals that PPP deserves serious attention from the clinical and economic standpoints

Background: Spinal cord injury is one of the diseases that, no specific treatment has yet found despite the variety of works that have done in this field. Different approaches to treat such injuries have investigated today. One of them is invasive intra-spinal interventions such as electrical stimulation. Therefore, in this study, the effect of the protocol for intra-spinal variable and fixed electrical stimulation has been investigated in order to recover from spinal cord injury. Methods: In the study, 18 Wistar male rats randomly divided into Three groups, including intra-spinal electrical stimulation (IES), IES with variable pattern of stimulation (VP IES) and a sham group. Animals initially subjected to induced spinal cord injury. After one week, the animal movement was recorded on the treadmill during practice using a camera and angles of the ankle joint were measured using the Tracker software. Then, the obtained data were analyzed by nonlinear evaluations in the phase space. Results: The motion analyses and kinematic analyses were carried out on all groups. According to the achieved results, the gait dynamics of the VP IES group has the most conformity to the gait dynamics of the healthy group. Also, the best quality of the balance preservation observed in the VP IES group. Conclusion: It can be concluded that the IES with variable pattern of stimulation along with exercise therapy has significant gait restorative effects and increases the range of motion in rats with induced spinal cord injury.

Background: Brain metastases are the most common tumors in the human central nervous system (CNS), with an occurrence 10 times higher than primary brain tumors in adults. A radiologist usually diagnoses these tumors. Typically, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used to evaluate the status and number of metastases, the design of surgical treatment or radiotherapy, and the response to treatment. This study aimed to consider the origin of metastatic tumors of the brain using diffusion-weighted imaging sequence.

Methods: In this study, 95 lesions observed in 51 patients with different types of brain metastasis who analyzed with standard brain MRI protocols such as T2-weighted fast spin-echo in sagittal, coronal and axial planes and T1-weighted spin-echo sequences before and after injection of contrast enhancement and diffusion-weighted imaging. The diffusion-weighted imaging included an echo-planar spin-echo sequence with two b values (0,1000 s/mm) and calculated apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps. We measured the ADC-value on normalized ADC maps and compared them with different methods. ANOVA was used to compare ADC among all groups as well as T-test for every two groups.

Results: The results showed that patients with lung cancer (squamous cell carcinoma, SCC) had the lowest mean ADC (658.70*10-3 mm2/s) and breast cancer patients with the highest mean ADC(935.52*10-3 mm2/s). This study demonstrated that most Brain metastases had low and intermediate ADC values. The analysis showed no significant difference among all groups. However, ADC values in breast cancer and kidney and lung (adenocarcinoma) were statistically higher in comparison to other groups. There were no critical discrepancies between ADC values in brain metastases from Breast cancer and lung cancer (adenocarcinoma) and kidney.

Conclusion: It seems that evaluating the origin of the brain metastatic tumors by using diffusion imaging (DWI) parameters could be helpful to prevent invasive methods like biopsies in some situations. Although it needs more studies to achieve this purpose.

Background: Anxiety among teenagers may disturb their life, and it is no controlling results in severe problems. Therefore, the present research was designed and conducted by the aim of investigating the effectiveness of group counseling training based on metacognitive therapy & dialectic behavior therapy on reducing anxiety in boy adolescent of divorce.

Methods: The present research conducted by quasi-experimental method and used a pretest-posttest with control group design. The statistical population of the current research included all boy students of divorced parents in Karaj in 2017-2018. Among them, 36 persons selected by convenience sampling method, and they were assigned into experimental and control groups (12 individuals per group) randomly. Before the intervention, the Beck Anxiety Inventory executed on participants. Group counseling therapy based on metacognitive therapy and dialectic behavior therapy provided for the experimental group subjects in sixteen 90-minute sessions, while the participants of the control group received no intervention. Posttest executed for all three groups after completing the training. The research data were analyzed by covariance analysis and by SPSS-22 software.

Results: Covariance analysis findings indicated that metacognitive therapy and dialectic behavior therapy groups had significant decreasing than the control group after interventional (P > 0.05). Also, results indicated than there was no significant difference between the effectiveness of metacognitive therapy and dialectic behavior therapy on anxiety decreasing among boy teenagers of divorced teenagers (P < 0.05).

Conclusion: Based on the results of the present research, we can state that dialectic behavior therapy and metacognitive therapy by changing negative cognitions reduce anxiety among divorced children.

Background: Happiness is the degree of emotion that a person judges with his overall quality of life as an utterly desirable life. The purpose of this study was to model the structural relationship between happiness based on psychological well-being and self-efficacy and self-regulatory mediation among students at Farhangian University.
Methods: This correlation study was carried out using structural equation modeling methods. The statistical population of this study included all undergraduate students at the Farhangian University of Golestan province who were studying in the academic year of 2016-17. By using the Morgan table, 280 people selected through multi-stage random cluster sampling. The data were collected using Savari and Arabzadeh’s educational self-regulatory scale, Sherer Self-efficacy Scale, Oxford Happiness Questionnaire, and Ryff’s psychological well-being questionnaire. Data analysis was performed using path analysis and structural equations with AMOS software.
Results: The results showed that psychological well-being had a positive effect on happiness (P < 0.02). Also, the pattern fit results showed that psychological well-being indirectly affects self-efficacy, and self-regulation has an indirect effect on happiness (P < 0.001).
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that there is a significant relationship between happiness and psychological well-being with self-efficacy and self-regulation mediation. Therefore, it is possible to raise the level of happiness and psychological well-being of students through the development of programs aimed at promoting self-efficacy and self-regulation of students.

Objective: Considering the prevalence of migraine and its detrimental effects on functioning, physical health, and quality of life as well as its psychosocial and social risks, the purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction treatment with treatment based on acceptance and commitment on the severity of pain and health-related quality of life in migraine patients.

Methodology: In this study, a semi-experimental design was used with pre-test, post-test, a three-month follow-up, and a control group. Using purposive sampling and considering the inclusion criteria, 45 patients with migraine diagnosis were selected from among those referring to the neurology department of Imam Hossein Hospital in Tehran. They were then randomly assigned to two experimental groups and a control group. The first experimental group received group therapy based on mindfulness (n = 15; 90-minute sessions), the second experimental group received acceptance and commitment based intervention (n = 15; 90-minute sessions), and the control group (n = 15) received no intervention. All subjects responded to pain intensity and health-related quality of life questionnaires before the intervention (pre-test), after the intervention (post-test), and 3 months after the intervention (follow-up). Collected data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA.

Findings: The findings showed that mean scores for the two experimental groups were significantly different from the control group in the post-test and follow-up phases in terms of severity of pain and health-related quality of life, while the mean scores for the two experimental groups did not differ significantly. The results emphasize the importance of these interventions for chronic diseases and offer new horizons in clinical interventions.

Conclusion: The results of this study showed that mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy can positively affect the severity of pain and health-related quality of life in migraine patients, and any of them can be used to improve the above-mentioned variables.

Previous electroencephalography (EEG) researches have shown significant differences in terms of abnormal brain activity among smokers and non-smokers. Typically, EEG analysis showed decreased slow waves and increased fast waves in people with nicotine consumption. The present study tested a transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) technique combined with Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) to reduce nicotine cravings. Specifically, cathodal tDCS over Left Prefrontal Cortex (PFC), as well as anodal stimulation over the right central zone, tested. An 18-year-old right-handed male with almost three years of smoking participated. He had no anti-tobacco medical prescription. The participant received twelve sessions of tDCS treatment (two times a week). Anodal stimulation (1.5 mA, 15 min) performed on C3 (LORETA source localization) and cathodal stimulation on FP2. Also, the participant received 30-minute MBRP-based psychotherapy sessions in order to ameliorate aggression, stress, and craving. Clinical evaluations, Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (AGQ), Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND), Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1994), and daily checklist for the number of smoked cigarettes administered along with Carbon monoxide (CO) levels. Also, subjective measures of craving intensity between zero and ten measured after treatment and 3-month follow-up. After treatment, the participant showed a substantial reduction in all clinical tests, and the number of cigarettes decreased from 30 to 2 a day. From a psycho neurotherapeutic perspective, the present study provides preliminary indications for a novel and efficient treatment of smoking during adolescence. Further studies are needed to determine generalizability and overall efficiency.