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Medicineworld.org: Archives of neurology news blog
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Archives Of Neurology News Blog From Medicineworld.Org
Best Memorization Strategies
Brenda Kirchhoff, research associate in psychology in the University's School of Arts and Sciences, conducted this study in the then-Washington University lab of Randy L. Buckner, now a professor of psychology at Harvard University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Their findings have been published in the July 20, 2006, issue of Neuron. (Kirchhoff is the article's first author and Buckner is senior author.). "Randy and I were interested in exploring individual differences in memory - why some people are better at learning new information than others," said Kirchhoff. "Our main goal was to determine the learning strategies that people use and their relationship to memory performance. Secondly, we wanted to know if individual differences in learning strategies were associated with individual differences in brain activity"......... Posted by: Daniel Permalink Source Easy Route From Nose To Brain
Scientists also saw changes in gene expression that could signal inflammation and a cellular stress response, but they do not know yet if a buildup of ultrafine particles causes brain damage, said lead author Alison Elder, Ph.D., research assistant professor of Environmental Medicine. The study tested manganese oxide ultrafine particles at a concentration typically inhaled by factory welders. The manganese oxide particles were the same size as manufactured nanoparticles, which are controversial and being diligently investigated because they are the key ingredient in a growing industry -- despite concerns about their safety. Nanotechnology is a new wave of science that deals with particles engineered from a number of materials such as carbon, zinc and gold, which are less than 100 nanometers in diameter. The manipulation of these materials into bundles or rods helps in the manufacturing of smaller-than-ever electronics, optical and medical equipment. The sub-microscopic particles are also used in consumer products such as toothpaste, lotions and some sunscreens......... Posted by: Sue Permalink Source Basis For Perceptual Learning
Following up on an accidental finding, MIT scientists at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and his colleagues have uncovered a mechanism for this phenomenon. The study will appear in the Aug. 3 issue of Neuron. The original idea was to look at how visual deprivation affects the brain. But before mice in the experiment were deprived of vision, scientists recorded baseline measurements by showing them a striped pattern on a video screen. Unexpectedly, the scientists observed that eventhough no change showed up during the viewing session, as few as 12 hours later the mice were more visually "tuned" to the pattern they had seen. Over several sessions, the mice's brain responses to the stripes increased, with the biggest responses occurring to stripes the mice saw more often. The scientists dubbed this change "stimulus selective response potentiation" or SRP. "The properties of SRP are strikingly similar to those described for some forms of human perceptual learning," said Mark Bear, Picower Professor of Neuroscience and co-author of the study. As a result, "understanding this type of perceptual learning is important because it can reveal mechanisms of implicit memory formation and might be exploited to promote rehabilitation after brain damage. Detailed knowledge of how practice changes brain chemistry is likely to suggest new pharmacological and behavioral therapies to facilitate these changes......... Posted by: Daniel Permalink Source Study Frames Depression Treatment Puzzle
The findings suggest that factors such as patient beliefs and expectations, doctor-patient relationships, or therapy history help complete the therapy picture. In this study, all subjects received blinded therapy with placebo for one week previous to receiving antidepressant medication. A "placebo lead-in" phase is usually used to familiarize patients with study procedures and to minimize the effect of any pre-existing therapy for depression. The placebo lead-in includes patient care, participation and therapy with placebo; the clinical impact is largely unknown. This study is the first to assess the relationship between brain changes during the placebo lead-in phase and later clinical outcome of antidepressant therapy. "Treatment results appear to be predicted, in part, by changes in brain activity found during placebo lead-in--previous to the actual use of antidepressant medication," said lead author Aimee M. Hunter, a research associate at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source An Eye-opening Look At Anesthesia
Dr. Emery N. Brown Photo courtesy / Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Dr. Emery N. Brown, who explores what happens to the brain during anesthesia, began a dual appointment as professor of health sciences and technology and professor of computational neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) at MIT in October 2005. "Anesthesia has taken on a mythical quality; it's not perceived as a neuro-physiological phenomenon," he said. He describes the motivation behind his current research focus: "For a number of years, I was practicing anesthesiology, learning clinical skills in order to take care of patients, not thinking about how anesthesia affects patients. Then 10 years ago, when HST alum Dr. Greg Koski was the head of human studies at MGH, he said, 'It would be interesting to see an image, to see what happens when someone is under anesthesia.'" Brown was hooked. "We say we induce anesthesia and then 'wake up' the patient," Brown said. "But in French the patient is reanime, or brought back to life. We haven't yet begun to think precisely about what we do, however. Anesthesia is not like sleep. It's not the same process"......... Posted by: Sue Permalink Source Genetic Model For Parkinson's Disease
The new mice are born healthy from healthy but genetically modified parents and will develop spontaneous disease. Prior studies in the field have been based on scientists delivering neurotoxic substances to kill the dopamine neurons. In the new mice, however, mice develop disease slowly in adulthood, like humans with Parkinson's disease, which may facilitate research aimed at finding novel medical therapys and other therapies. "We see that the dopamine producing nerve cells in the brain stem slowly degenerate", says Dr. Nils-Gran Larsson. "In the microscope we can see. that the mitochondria are swollen and that aggregates of a protein, probably alpha-synuclein starts to accumulate in the nerve cell bodies. Inclusions of alpha-synuclein-rich so called Lewy bodies is typical for the human disease". The causes of Parkinson's disease have long remained a mystery. Genes and environment are both implicated, but recently there has been an increased focus on the roles of genetic factors. It has been observed that mutations in many genes can lead directly to disease, while other mutations may be susceptibility factors, so that carriers have an increased risk of becoming ill. A common denominator for some of the implicated genes is their suggested role for the normal functioning of mitochondria......... Posted by: Daniel Permalink Source meditation and cognitive impairment
"We'll be looking at patients with mild cognitive impairment or symptoms of early Alzheimer's disease," explains Andrew Newberg, MD, Associate Professor of Radiology, Psychiatry, and Religious Studies, who also directs the Center's investigations and is Principal Investigator of this pilot study. "We'll combine their meditation with brain imaging over a period of time to see if meditation improves cognitive function and is linked to actual change in the brain's activity levels. Specifically, we'll be looking for decreased activity in specific areas of the brain". The dementia process causes a decreased function of neurons in the brain and can result in problems with memory, visual-spatial tasks, and handling emotional issues. As it worsens in a patient, it can also eventually lead to the need for round-the-clock care......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Brain In Action
Thanks to a new imaging system, scientists at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have gotten an unprecedented look into how genes shape the brain in response to the environment. Their work is published in the July 28 issue of Cell. "This work represents a technological breakthrough," said first author Kuan Hong Wang, a research scientist at the Picower Institute who will launch his own laboratory at the National Institute of Mental Health in the fall. "This is the first study that demonstrates the ability to directly visualize the molecular activity of individual neurons in the brain of live animals at a single-cell resolution, and to observe the changes in the activity in the same neurons in response to the changes of the environment on a daily basis for a week." This advance, coupled with other brain disease models, could "offer unparalleled advantages in understanding pathological processes in real time, leading to potential new drugs and therapys for a host of neurological diseases and mental disorders," said Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, a co-author of the study. An unexpected finding. Tonegawa, director of the Picower Institute and the Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at MIT, Wang and his colleagues observed that visual experience induces a protein that works as a molecular "filter" to enhance the overall selectivity of the brain's responses to visual stimuli......... Posted by: Daniel Permalink Source Regular Multivitamin Use Near Time Of Conception
Overall, women who used multivitamins regularly showed a 45 percent reduction in preeclampsia risk, as per the study. However, results were even more remarkable for women who were not overweight previous to pregnancy. "Our data show that women who are not overweight before pregnancy and who used multivitamins at least once a week before conception and in the first three months of pregnancy reduced their risk of preeclampsia by a striking 72 percent in comparison to those who didn't take a multivitamin during this time period," said Lisa Bodnar, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH). "At this time, multivitamin use makes little apparent difference in preeclampsia rates for women who are overweight before pregnancy. Even so, the results suggest that regular multivitamin use in the pre-pregnancy period may help to prevent preeclampsia"......... Posted by: Emily Permalink Source how much the eye tells the brain
Much research on the basic science of vision asks what types of information the brain receives; this study instead asked how much. Using an intact retina from a guinea pig, the scientists recorded spikes of electrical impulses from ganglion cells using a miniature multi-electrode array. The researchers calculate that the human retina can transmit data at roughly 10 million bits per second. By comparison, an Ethernet can transmit information between computers at speeds of 10 to 100 million bits per second. The retina is actually a piece of the brain that has grown into the eye and processes neural signals when it detects light. Ganglion cells carry information from the retina to the higher brain centers; other nerve cells within the retina perform the first stages of analysis of the visual world. The axons of the retinal ganglion cells, with the support of other types of cells, form the optic nerve and carry these signals to the brain......... Posted by: Daniel Permalink Source Older Blog Entries 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Did you know?
The drug Ativan is better than Valium or Dilantin for controlling severe epileptic seizures, according to a new review of studies.Ativan, or lorazepam, and Valium, or diazepam, are both benzodiazepines, the currently preferred class of drugs for treating severe epileptic seizures. Dilantin, or phenytoin, is an anticonvulsant long used for the treatment of epileptic seizures.
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