New research suggests that high blood pressure in middle age plays a critical role in whether blood pressure in old age may affect memory and thinking. The study is published in the June 4, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
A team of UCLA researchers has identified a new gene involved in Parkinson’s disease, a finding that may one day provide a target for a new drug to prevent and potentially even cure the debilitating neurological disorder.
Neuroscientists at Mayo Clinic in Florida and at Aarhus University in Denmark have shed light on why neurons in the brain’s reward system can be miswired, potentially contributing to disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Researchers at Mayo Clinic have demonstrated in a mouse model that their recently developed synthetic peptide carrier is a potential delivery vehicle for brain cancer chemotherapy drugs and other neurological medications.
Researchers at Shepherd Center are studying whether stimulating the brain before rehabilitation could yield greater gains in motor function for people recovering from stroke.
A new study from the Monell Center reports that oral taste cells contain receptors for glucocorticoid “stress hormones”. The findings suggest glucocorticoids may act directly on taste cells to affect how they respond to sugars and other taste stimuli under conditions of stress.
Scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have identified a compound, called 2-PMAP, in animal studies that reduced by more than half levels of amyloid proteins in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Adolescence can be a wild ride. But a new book called The Owner’s Manual for Driving your Adolescent Brain uses science and storytelling to explain to children how to think about and sometimes manage the chaos. The book is a collaboration of neuroscientist Terrence Deak, associate professor of psychology at Binghamton University, and his aunt, JoAnn Deak, a longtime educator with a doctorate in educational psychology and author of several books, including Your Fantastic Elastic Brain, written for children ages 5 to 9.
Researchers from Mayo Clinic and the University of Pennsylvania announce the launch of the Seizure Detection Challenge, an international competition inviting the best minds in “machine learning” to improve devices to track and treat epilepsy. Researchers from Penn and Mayo Clinic have designed the challenge, which is hosted by Kaggle.com, an online community where data scientists come together to solve complex problems.
For patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) that can't be controlled by medications, a minimally invasive laser procedure performed under MRI guidance provides a safe and effective alternative to surgery, suggests a study in the June issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
Kiarash Sadrieh, MD, of the Division of Neurology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, offers tips for parents on how to identify when their child suffers a febrile seizure.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have erased and reactivated memories in rats, profoundly altering the animals’ reaction to past events. The study is the first to show the ability to selectively remove a memory and predictably reactivate it by stimulating nerves in the brain at frequencies that are known to weaken and strengthen the connections between nerve cells, called synapses.
Dr. Max Wiznitzer, pediatric neurologist, comments on the CDC report.
Researchers have identified a protein recycling pathway in mammalian cells that removes misfolded proteins. They also demonstrated this pathway’s role in protecting against neurodegenerative diseases in an animal model.
People with high levels of cynical distrust may be more likely to develop dementia, according to a study published in the May 28, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Accurate clinical course descriptions (phenotypes) of multiple sclerosis (MS) are important for communication, prognostication, design and recruitment for clinical trials, and treatment decision-making. Researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, part of the International Committee on Clinical Trials of MS, collaborated to re-examine the standardized MS clinical course descriptions originally published in 1996 and recommend refined phenotype descriptions that include improved clinical descriptive terminology, MRI and other imaging techniques, analysis of fluid biomarkers and neurophysiology. The proposed 2013 revisions will appear in the May 28, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The overall number and nature of mutations—rather than the presence of any single mutation—influences an individual’s risk of developing schizophrenia, as well as its severity, according to a discovery by Columbia University Medical Center researchers. The findings could have important implications for the early detection and treatment of schizophrenia.
Scientists and physicians at UC San Francisco (UCSF) are leading a $26 million, multi-institutional research program in which they will employ advanced technology to characterize human brain networks and better understand and treat a range of common, debilitating psychiatric disorders, focusing first on anxiety disorders and major depression.
Penn Medicine researchers have discovered that cerebral blood flow (CBF) levels decreased similarly in males and females before puberty, but saw them diverge sharply in puberty, with levels increasing in females while decreasing further in males, which could give hints as to developing differences in behavior in men and women and sex-specific pre-dispositions to certain psychiatric disorders.
Researchers reveal that neurons can utilize a supremely localized internal store of calcium to initiate the secretion of neuropeptides, one class of signaling molecules through which neurons communicate with each other and with other cells.
“Aha” moments are rare in medical research, scientists say. As rare, they add, as finding mice with Mohawk-like hairstyles. But both events happened in a lab at NYU Langone Medical Center, months after an international team of neuroscientists bred hundreds of mice with a suspect genetic mutation tied to autism spectrum disorders.
Children with profound deafness who receive a cochlear implant had as much as five times the risk of having delays in areas of working memory, controlled attention, planning and conceptual learning as children with normal hearing, according to Indiana University research published in JAMA Otolaryngology.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered that a protein with a propensity to form harmful aggregates in the body when produced in the liver protects against Alzheimer’s disease aggregates when it is produced in the brain.
A less-well-known type of retina cell plays a more critical role in vision than previously understood.
A team of UNC School of Medicine researchers led by Mark Zylka, PhD found that reducing the enzyme PIP5K1C lessens the level of a crucial lipid called PIP2 in pain-sensing neurons, thus decreasing pain. They also found a compound that could dampen the activity of PIP5K1C and lead to a new treatment for chronic pain.
Basic science research suggests a promising, if surprising, method to protect against anesthesia-induced developmental neurotoxicity: subclinical carbon monoxide (CO) inhalation, according to a report and accompanying editorial published in the June 2014 issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, the official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS).
Research in an animal model at Saint Louis University supports the potential therapeutic value of an antisense compound to treat Alzheimer's disease.
Johns Hopkins researchers say they have developed a technique that can predict — with 95 percent accuracy — which stroke victims will benefit from intravenous, clot-busting drugs and which will suffer dangerous and potentially lethal bleeding in the brain.
Scientists have advanced a brain-scanning technology that tracks what the brain is doing by shining dozens of tiny LED lights on the head. This avoids the radiation exposure and bulky magnets the others require.
Like key players in social networks, University of Kansas scientists have found evidence that there are keywords in word networks that hold together groups of words in our memory. The existence of keywords opens up many possible real-life applications such as helping individuals with word finding after stroke. Conversely, removing a keyword through psycholinguistic tasks, could actually disrupt language processing - fracturing our word network.
The leader of organized neurosurgery, AANS, its affiliate NREF and industry-leader Brainlab collaborate to build a comprehensive data bank for SRS treatments.
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Naval Health Research Center have found that mindfulness training – a combination of meditation and body awareness exercises – can help U.S. Marine Corps personnel prepare for and recover from stressful combat situations.
A neurosurgeon tests if deep brain stimulation electrodes can be used as an alternative to traditional WADA test for identifying brain hemisphere for speech dominance.
Mice severely disabled by a condition similar to multiple sclerosis (MS) were able to walk less than two weeks following treatment with human neural stem cells. The finding, which uncovers potential new avenues for treating MS, will be published online on May 15, 2014, in the journal Stem Cell Reports.
Mice crippled by an autoimmune disease similar to multiple sclerosis regained the ability to walk and run after a research team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, University of Utah and University of California, Irvine implanted human stem cells into their injured spinal cords.
A University of Pennsylvania researcher has discovered that the common selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) citalopram arrested the growth of amyloid beta, a peptide in the brain that clusters in plaques that are thought to trigger the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Penn, in collaboration with investigators at Washington University, tested the drug’s effects on the brain interstitial fluid (ISF) in plaque-bearing mice and the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of healthy human subjects to draw its conclusions, which are detailed in the new issue of Science Translational Medicine.
A commonly prescribed antidepressant can reduce production of the main ingredient in Alzheimer’s brain plaques, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Pennsylvania.
The venom from marine cone snails, used to immobilize prey, contains numerous peptides called conotoxins, some of which can act as painkillers in mammals. Researchers provide new insight into the mechanisms by which one conotoxin, Vc1.1, inhibits pain.
Mutations in two presenilin proteins associated with familial Alzheimer's disease disrupt the flow of calcium ions within neurons. Researchers have found that suppressing the hyperactivity of the calcium channels alleviated FAD-like symptoms in mice models of the disease.
–– A research team from the Friedman Brain Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published evidence showing that subtle changes of inhibitory signaling in the reward pathway can change how animals respond to drugs such as cocaine. This is the first study to demonstrate the critical links between the levels of the trafficking protein, the potassium channels’ effect on neuronal activity and a mouse’s response to cocaine. Results from the study were published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuron earlier this month.
Each helmet model’s ability to reduce concussion risk is assessed through 120 impact tests that are analyzed using the STAR Evaluation System, with each test weighted based on how often that impact condition occurs on the field.
Stimulation of a certain population of neurons within the brain can alter the learning process, according to a team of neuroscientists and neurosurgeons at the University of Pennsylvania. A report in the Journal of Neuroscience describes for the first time that human learning can be modified by stimulation of dopamine-containing neurons in a deep brain structure known as the substantia nigra.
Using new stem cell technology, scientists at the Salk Institute have shown that neurons generated from the skin cells of people with schizophrenia behave strangely in early developmental stages, providing a hint as to ways to detect and potentially treat the disease early.
People who are exposed to paint, glue or degreaser fumes at work may experience memory and thinking problems in retirement, decades after their exposure, according to a study published in the May 13, 2014, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
A research team from the Friedman Brain Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has published evidence that shows that subtle changes of inhibitory signaling in the reward pathway can change how animals respond to drugs such as cocaine. This is the first study to demonstrate the critical links between the levels of the trafficking protein, the potassium channels’ effect on neuronal activity and a mouse’s response to cocaine. Results from the study are published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuron on May 7, 2014.
Much like using dimmer switches to brighten or darken rooms, biochemists have identified a protein that can be used to slow down or speed up the growth of brain tumors in mice.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists studying two rare, inherited childhood neurodegenerative disorders have identified a new, possibly common source of DNA damage that may play a role in other neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and aging. The findings appear in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience.
The obvious cognitive symptoms of minor traumatic brain injury can dissipate within a few days, but blast-exposed veterans may continue to have problems focusing attention on one sound source and ignoring others, an ability known as "selective auditory attention.” According to a new study, such apparent "hearing" problems actually may be caused by diffuse injury to the brain's prefrontal lobe -- work that will be described at the 167th meeting of the ASA.
A scientific team led by the Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco has discovered that a common form of a gene already associated with long life also improves learning and memory, a finding that could have implications for treating age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s.
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