Feature Channels: Neuro

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Like the hairs they resemble, cilia come in all lengths, from short to long. But unlike the hair on our heads, the length of sensory cilia on nerve cells in our noses is of far more than merely cosmetic significance. Researchers found a location-dependent pattern in cilia length in the mouse nasal cavity that affects sensitivity to odors. The discovery may also have important implications for the study of sight and touch.

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Researchers at the NYU Langone Concussion Center reviewed studies that involved athletes who sustained a concussion during sporting activities and found the vision test, known as the King-Devick test, was 86 percent sensitive in detecting whether a concussion had occurred, as confirmed by clinical diagnosis. When combined with rapid assessments of balance and cognition, the testing battery was able to detect 100 percent of concussions that occurred among athletes in the studies that measured this outcome.

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Researchers have discovered why long-term use of L-DOPA (levodopa), the most effective treatment for Parkinson’s disease, commonly leads to a movement problem called dyskinesia, a side effect that can be as debilitating as Parkinson’s disease itself.

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Addressing the relatively small number of new cancer drugs for children, a selective group of leading research centers is joining a new federally funded research consortium aimed at bringing scientific rigor and a concentrated effort to identifying new drug candidates for pediatric clinical trials.

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People with Parkinson’s disease (PD) tend to slow down and decrease the intensity of their movements even though many retain the ability to move quickly and forcefully. Now, scientists report evidence that the slowdown likely arises from the brain’s “cost/benefit analysis,” which gets skewed by the loss of dopamine in people with PD. In addition, their small study demonstrated that noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain temporarily improved some patients’ motor symptoms.

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Researchers may have discovered a new marker found in the blood for episodic migraine, according to a study published in the September 9, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Episodic migraine is defined as having less than 15 headaches per month.

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In a consensus paper, a global panel of leading aging experts suggests physicians routinely screen everyone older than 70 annually for cognitive problems.

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Low. Down. Less than normal. That’s what the word depression means, and what people with depression often feel like. But sometimes, depression can mean too much of something – as new research shows.

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Using “mini-brains” built with induced pluripotent stem cells derived from patients with a rare, but devastating, neurological disorder, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say they have identified a drug candidate that appears to “rescue” dysfunctional cells by suppressing a critical genetic alteration.

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No cures exist for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and the only approved therapy slows the progression by only a few months. A new study identifies a promising unexplored avenue of treatment for ALS, the endothelin system.

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One of the longstanding debates in science, that has, perhaps unsurprisingly, permeated into the field of stem cell research, is the question of nature versus nurture influencing development. Science on stem cells thus far, has suggested that, as one side of the existential debate holds: their fate is not predestined. But new research from the Neural Stem Cell Institute and Drexel University suggests that the cells’ tabula might not be as rasa as we have been led to believe.

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New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may help explain why drug treatments for addiction and depression don’t work for some patients. The conditions are linked to reward and aversion responses in the brain. And the research suggests that some treatments simultaneously stimulate reward and aversion responses, resulting in a net zero effect.

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Diabetes may be linked to the buildup of tangles or tau in the brain, separate from Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study published in the September 2, 2015, online version of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Scientists have pinpointed a population of neurons in the brain that influences whether one drink leads to two, which could ultimately lead to a cure for alcoholism and other addictions. A study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience by researchers at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, finds that alcohol consumption alters the structure and function of neurons in the dorsomedial striatum, a part of the brain known to be important in goal-driven behaviors.

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The appoptosin protein initiates a path that leads to the accumulation of tau, a key component of brain lesions.

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The new approach shows how cells in the spinal cord synchronize many neurons at once to allow complex movements, which could have implications for treating spinal cord injuries and diseases

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Electrical stimulation on the skin surface at the elbow can produce feeling in the hand—including rare “natural” sensations—according to a study just published in the Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development. The hope is that surface electrical stimulation (SES) may someday be harnessed to provide “natural sensations” in body areas distant from where the stimulation occurs. If this could happen, it would lead to improved treatment for phantom limb pain, according to Katharine H. Polasek, assistant professor of engineering at Hope College in Holland, MI.

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Building on scientific evidence implicating disturbed calcium regulation in brain aging accumulated during the past 30 years, a research team in the University of Kentucky Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences has found a connection between unhealthy brain aging and a protein responsible for regulating calcium at the molecular level, FKBP1b.

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As more stroke patients undergo minimally invasive procedures to stop strokes in progress, physicians are debating the best way to anesthetize patients -- general anesthesia or conscious sedation?

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The joy of running. That sense of well-being, freedom and extra energy that runners often experience is not just a matter of endorphins. A study at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) shows that the "runner’s high" phenomenon is also caused by dopamine, an important neurotransmitter for motivation.

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UCLA scientists have developed a potentially promising new combination therapy for glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer.

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Researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia have performed the first focused ultrasound treatments in the United States for dyskinesia associated with Parkinson’s disease.

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University of Maryland Medicine and its Center for Metabolic Imaging and Image-Guided Therapeutics has begun to use MRI-guided focused ultrasound on a deep structure within the brain related to Parkinson’s disease – the globus pallidus.

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Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), a neurodegenerative disorder with similarities to Parkinson’s disease, is caused by a newly discovered type of prion, akin to the misfolded proteins involved in incurable progressive brain diseases such Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), according to two new research papers led by scientists at UC San Francisco.

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Working with mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins have added to evidence that a commonly prescribed antidepressant called fluoxetine helps stroke victims improve movement and coordination, and possibly why.

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Degenerating neurons in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) measurably responded to an experimental gene therapy in which nerve growth factor (NGF) was injected into their brains, report researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in the current issue of JAMA Neurology.

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The death of brain cells in Parkinson’s disease may be caused by a form of cellular energy crisis in neurons that require unusually high quantities of energy to carry out their job of regulating movement, researchers at the University of Montreal reported today.

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Research may lead to reevaluation of the current understanding of information flow and neural circuit maturation in the visual system.

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People who will develop dementia may begin to lose awareness of their memory problems two to three years before the actual onset of the disease, according to a new study published in the August 26, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study also found that several dementia-related brain changes, or pathologies, are associated with the decline in memory awareness.

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A new study from the UC San Francisco Pediatric Brain Center shows that childhood cancer survivors suffering one stroke have double the risk of suffering a second stroke, when compared with non-cancer stroke survivors.

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Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered some of the first steps in how a very common gene mutation causes the brain damage associated with both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

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St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and University of Massachusetts Medical School uncover the mechanism underlying the most common genetic cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia

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Only half of brain cancers actually start in the brain. The rest – as in the case of former president Jimmy Carter – are metastatic tumors from cancer that originated elsewhere in the body.

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Newly published research from the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine explains why up to half of older adults who undergo general anesthesia develop postoperative delirium – the sudden onset of confusion, aggression or agitated behavior that could progress to dementia.

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While some research suggests that a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids can protect brain health, a large clinical trial by researchers at the National Institutes of Health found that omega-3 supplements did not slow cognitive decline in older persons. With 4,000 patients followed over a five-year period, the study is one of the largest and longest of its kind. It was published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Commonly used antidepressant drugs change levels of a key signaling protein in the brain region that processes both pain and mood, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published August 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have found how even brief exposure to sudden sounds or mild trauma can form permanent, long-term brain connections, or memories, in a specific region of the brain. Moreover, the research team, working with rats, says it was able to chemically stimulate those biological pathways in the locus coeruleus — the area of the brain best known for releasing the “fight or flight” hormone noradrenaline — to heighten and improve the animals’ hearing.

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The wriggling and writhing of worms may hold clues to the inner workings of our brains, according to scientists at the MRC’s Clinical Sciences Centre at Imperial College London. The researchers have developed a pioneering tool to analyse a worm’s posture as it wriggles, and will use the tool to investigate how exactly the worm’s brain controls its movements.

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A brief period of postnatal visual deprivation, when early in life, drives a rewiring of the brain areas involved in visual pr

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Testing the saliva of healthy older people for the level of the stress hormone cortisol may help identify individuals who should be screened for problems with thinking skills, according to a study published in the August 19, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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If a pregnant woman with high blood pressure and no history of headache suddenly develops a headache that quickly gets worse, she could be at risk for pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia, which put both the mother and fetus at risk.

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A new study in Journal of Neurophysiology uses a novel approach to identify potential drug targets for treating fibromyalgia, This study is published ahead-of-print.

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You see a man at the grocery store. Is that the fellow you went to college with or just a guy who looks like him? It turns out that a tiny spot in the brain has the answer.

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By early childhood, the sight regions of a blind person’s brain respond to sound, especially spoken language, a Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist has found

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People being treated for bipolar disorder and other psychiatric illnesses are at greater risk of attempting suicide, but physicians may now have tools to predict which of those individuals will attempt it and intervene early to prevent such tragedies from occurring.

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