Feature Channels: Neuro

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Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that causes seizures of many different types. Recent research from Japan has found that epileptic seizures can be more easily predicted by using an electrocardiogram to measure fluctuations in the heart rate than by measuring brain activity, because the monitoring device is easier to wear. By making more accurate predictions, it is possible to prevent injury or accident that may result from an epileptic seizure. This is a significant contribution toward the realization of a society where epileptic patients can live without worrying about sustaining injury from an unexpected seizure.

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Scientists have developed a genetically modified mouse with brain cells that light up when active. The new mouse will allow scientists to see how the brain processes information. This study is published in Journal of Neurophysiology and is highlighted as one of this month’s “best of the best” as part of the American Physiological Society’s APSselect program.

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Like an endlessly repeating video loop, horrible memories plague people with post-traumatic stress disorder. But a new study in veterans shows the promise of mindfulness training for enhancing the ability to manage those thoughts if they come up. It also shows the veterans’ brains changed in ways that could help switch off that endless loop.

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Professor Chung-Hyuk Park at GW’s School of Engineering and Applied Science is using a robot to help kids with autism learn how to navigate difficult social situations. The basis of the research by Dr. Park is that kids with autism tend to bond with computers more easily than humans, so we can use this knowledge to help them learn how to regulate their emotions. The robot encounters situations that kids with autism may have trouble handling, like loud music, bright lights or strong smells. The robot then tries to communicate what it needs to be more comfortable, such as asking someone to turn down the music, shut off the lights or move the pungent flowers to the other side of the room. The hope is that kids with autism will mimic the robot's behaviors, helping them to manage a social situation rather than struggle to communicate the problem.

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A team from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the University of North Carolina (UNC) has been awarded $3.4 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop novel therapeutics for the treatment of addiction and mood disorders.

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Learning difficulties and behavioral problems during childhood can lead to suboptimal social and educational outcomes among young adults with childhood epilepsy even when their seizures are well under control and their disease in remission, according to findings from a study led by researchers at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

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A new UCLA psychology study provides insights into how the brain combines sound and vision. The research suggests that there is not one sole mechanism in the brain that governs how much our senses work together to process information.

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Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and University of British Columbia (UBC) have determined that, in mice, age diminishes ability to regenerate axons, the brain’s communication wires in the spinal cord. The study is published March 31 in Cell Reports.

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New research from the Monell Center reveals that olfactory marker protein (OMP), a molecule found in the cells that detect odor molecules, plays a key role in regulating the speed and transmission of odor information to the brain. The findings solve a 30-year-old mystery regarding the function of OMP.

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A panel of sleep and brain injury specialists recommends specific steps to test and develop sleep-related treatments to improve the outcome of mild traumatic brain injury. The recommendations appear online ahead of print in the journal Neurotherapeutics.

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Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine have found a class of commonly used fungicides that produce gene expression changes similar to those in people with autism and neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington’s disease.

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New research suggests that looking at structures in the right side of the brain may help predict who will better recover from language problems after a stroke, according to a study published in Neurology®, a medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Research in the lab of neurobiologist Gina Turrigiano shines new light on what goes on in the brain when we're not awake.

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Could certain types of hormonal contraceptives cause an increase in seizures in women with epilepsy? A recent Texas A&M Health Science Center study suggests that ethinyl estradiol, the primary component of oral contraceptives, could be detrimental to the epileptic brain.

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Ever see something that isn't really there? Could your mind be playing tricks on you? The "tricks" might be your brain reacting to feedback between neurons in different parts of the visual system, according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience by Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Sandra J. Kuhlman and colleagues.

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Research focuses on the moment-to-moment variations in a region of the brain involved in multiple mental processes.

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Mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI) could be linked to eye movement impairment, even beyond the acute stage of injury, according to researchers at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU). These findings, released online in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, indicate a potentially more effective way to identify long-term chronic effects on those with mild TBI.

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The Movement Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center has been chosen by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) as one of six academic medical centers in the world to host the second class of the Edmond J. Safra Fellowship in Movement Disorders for 2017-2019.

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) The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has been chosen by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) as one of six academic centers to host the second class of the Edmond J. Safra Fellowship in Movement Disorders.

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Chemists have identified the complex chemical structure of the protein that stacks together to form fibrils in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients. Armed with this knowledge, researchers can identify specific targets for diagnosis and treatment.

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Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the student-athletes and trainers from all men’s and women’s teams at Wake Forest University and Winston-Salem State University will be contributing to the largest-ever study of concussion in sport.

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Writing in Nature Medicine, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, with colleagues in Japan and Wisconsin, report that they have successfully directed stem cell-derived neurons to regenerate lost tissue in damaged corticospinal tracts of rats, resulting in functional benefit.

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Researchers at the University of Vermont College of Medicine have made a discovery on just how we know when to empty our bladders, which may have the potential to lead to new therapeutic interventions for bladder dysfunction. The study, “Transient contractions of urinary bladder smooth muscle are drivers of afferent nerve activity during filling,” by Thomas J. Heppner et al., appears in the April issue of The Journal of General Physiology.

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The mysteries of teenage brains. The genetic underpinnings of schizophrenia. How we take in a friend's face with our eyes and commit it to memory. Are we closer to reeling in such understanding?

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A study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers finds that the brains of young adult marijuana users react differently to social exclusion than do those of non-users. In a report published in the March issue of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, the team reports that activation of the insula, a region of the brain that is usually active during social rejection, was reduced in young marijuana users when they were being excluded from participation in virtual game of catch.

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Neuroscientists document some of the first steps in the process by which a stem cell transforms into different cell types.

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This study has helped determine that UBE3A gene loss specifically from GABAergic neurons is what’s critical for seizures in Angelman patients. But UBE3A loss from other neuron types may drive other phenotypes associated with the condition.

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Exercise in older people is associated with a slower rate of decline in thinking skills that occurs with aging. People who reported light to no exercise experienced a decline equal to 10 more years of aging as compared to people who reported moderate to intense exercise, according to a population-based observational study published in the March 23, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Evidence is mounting that a gene called PTCHD1 helps the brain sort between important sights and sounds — and distractions.

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Whether an aneurysm appears as a ballooning and weakened artery in the brain or in the body’s biggest blood vessel, the aorta, the results can be serious – even deadly. Yet not all aneurysms are created equal.

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Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease (CMT) is a family of inherited disorders of the peripheral nervous system, affecting approximately one in 2,500 Americans. Its most common iteration, CMT1, comes in many forms, most of which have to date been linked to a small set of causative genes. New research from the department of Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recently spanned the globe to uncover a new genetic cause of CMT1. Their findings are published online this week in Brain.

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Douglas Nordli, Jr., MD, has been named chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurology and co-director of the Neurosciences Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). Dr. Nordli will also serve as a vice chair of Neurology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

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Cell’s protein factory may hold key to stalling cognitive decline.

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A healthy brain is critical to a person's cognitive abilities, but measuring brain health can be a complicated endeavor. A new study by University of Illinois researchers reports that healthy brain metabolism corresponds with fluid intelligence - a measure of one's ability to solve unusual or complex problems - in young adults.

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Scientists have revealed the brain activity in animals that helps them find food and other vital resources in unfamiliar environments where there are no cues, such as lights and sounds, to guide them.

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Challenging the longstanding practice of keeping all children with head injuries in the hospital overnight, new research from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital suggests that patients with simple skull fractures can be sent home safely if they have no evidence of brain injury and no neurological symptoms.

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A study has identified nerve cells and a region of the brain behind this innate fear response. With a new technique that uses specially-engineered viruses to uncover the nerve pathway involved, a research team led by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center biologist and Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Linda Buck has pinpointed a tiny area of the mouse brain responsible for this scent-induced reaction.

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The University of Maryland School of Medicine has appointed Peter B. Crino as Chairman of the department of neurology. Dr. Crino has spent his career studying and developing new models for treating some of the most difficult and complex disorders of the brain. He is an expert in defining developmental disorders associated with intractable epilepsy.

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UA researcher Julie Miller believes birds can help us understand the genetics behind language problems associated with Parkinson's disease.

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New research has provided more evidence that an innovative treatment strategy may help prevent brain swelling and death in stroke patients. J. Marc Simard, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, along with colleagues at Yale University and Massachusetts General Hospital, found that Cirara, an investigational drug, powerfully reduced brain swelling and death in patients who had suffered a type of large stroke called malignant infarction, which normally carries a high mortality rate.

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The Independent Citizens Oversight Committee of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine approved yesterday a $6.3 million grant to a research team from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and University of California, Davis to pursue a novel human embryonic stem cell-based therapy to rescue and restore neurons devastated by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS.

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While researching the brain’s learning and memory system, scientists at Johns Hopkins say they stumbled upon a new type of nerve cell that seems to control feeding behaviors in mice. The finding, they report, adds significant detail to the way brains tell animals when to stop eating and, if confirmed in humans, could lead to new tools for fighting obesity.

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Cedars-Sinai research scientists have found that immune cells in the brain play a direct role in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, offering hope for new therapies to target the neurodegenerative disease that gradually leads to paralysis and death.

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An international team of investigators led by experts at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has been awarded a nearly $3 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to establish diagnostic criteria for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

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Tracy C. Grikscheit, MD, of The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles receives $7.1 million grant from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine Translational Research program to develop a cellular therapy for the treatment of nerve disorders of the digestive system.

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Developmentally appropriate activities conducted by parents with their child during the first three years after birth reduce childhood cognitive delays in low-resource families.

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In one of the first studies to "read" the genetic activity inside individual brain cells, University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Xinyu Zhao has identified the genetic machinery that causes maturation in a young nerve cell.

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The study will look at how the recurrent paramilitary and drug-related violence in Colombia affect the brain function and development of children and youth in the region.