The first case of Alzheimer’s disease diagnosed in an HIV-positive individual will be presented in a poster session at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2016 in Toronto July 27. The finding in a 71-year-old man triggers a realization about HIV survivors now reaching the age when Alzheimer’s risk begins to escalate.
Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease are invited to participate in the PD Buddy Program, which matches them with first-year UofL medical students for a series of one-on-one meetings designed to benefit both students and the patients. The program is the only one of its kind for Parkinson’s patients.
In a study of 48 adults with a diagnosis of Early Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment, almost half reported positive changes in life outlook and quality of life, countering the assumption that this diagnosis would have a uniformly negative impact.
esearchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control studied the prevalence of suicide among people with epilepsy compared to the population overall and estimated that the annual suicide mortality rate among those with epilepsy was 22 percent higher than in the general population. Results are online in the journal Epilepsy and Behavior.
When asked how lack of sleep affects emotions, common responses are usually grumpy, foggy and short-tempered. While many jokes are made about how sleep deprivation turns the nicest of people into a Jekyll and Hyde, not getting enough shut-eye can lead to far more serious consequences than irritability, difficulty concentrating and impatience.
A new protein which will help scientists to understand why nerve cells die in people with Alzheimer's disease has been designed in a University of Sussex laboratory.
A team led by Nicolas Bazan, MD, PhD, Boyd Professor and Director of LSU Health New Orleans' Neuroscience Center of Excellence, has developed neuroprotective compounds that may prevent the development of epilepsy. The findings will be published online in Scientific Reports, a Nature journal, on July 22, 2016.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and Scripps Clinic have received a grant of nearly $2.4 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to support safety and quality tests of a potential stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease.
• A metabolite that is normally excreted in urine was linked with impaired cognitive function in patients with kidney failure.
• The metabolite has been previously linked to cognitive impairment in other patient populations.
The Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) at Georgia State University has received a five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to investigate the neurochemical mechanisms underlying social stress in males and females.
In football, player-vs.-player hits will likely cause more severe head impacts than other impacts, according to a new study by a University of Georgia researcher.
Adaptation in reaching -- gradual improvement of motor control in response to a perturbation -- is a central issue in motor neuroscience.However, even the cortical origin of errors that drive adaptation has remained elusive. In a new paper published in Neuron, Inoue, Uchimura and Kitazawa have shown that error signals encoded by motor cortical neurons drive adaptation in reaching.
Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics have found a gene responsible for an intellectual disability disorder and proven how it works. The research, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, details the role of a gene called BCL11A in a new intellectual disability syndrome.
Prof. Fiona Doetsch's research team at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has discovered that the choroid plexus, a largely ignored structure in the brain that produces the cerebrospinal fluid, is an important regulator of adult neural stem cells. The study recently published in "Cell Stem Cell" also shows that signals secreted by the choroid plexus dynamically change during aging which affects aged stem cell behavior.
Transgenic Huntington's disease monkeys display a full spectrum of symptoms resembling the human disease, ranging from motor problems and neurodegeneration to emotional dysregulation and immune system changes, scientists at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University report.
Duke University could receive up to $19 million to lead early-stage clinical trials for new drugs to treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and neuropathy.
Long-term treatment with broad spectrum antibiotics decreased levels of amyloid plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, and activated inflammatory microglial cells in the brains of mice in a new study by neuroscientists from the University of Chicago.
A multidisciplinary research team led by University of Houston scientist Jarek Wosik has developed a high-temperature superconducting coil that allows magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners to produce higher resolution images or acquire images in a shorter time than when using conventional coils.
Atlanta, Ga - 07/20/2016 - The Lewy Body Dementia Association (LBDA) and HCR ManorCare announced today that the two organizations are working together to provide a collaborative approach to providing support to those affected by Lewy body dementia.
The cerebral cortex resembles a vast switchboard. Countless lines carrying information about the environment, for example from the sensory organs, converge in the cerebral cortex. In order to direct the flow of data into meaningful pathways, the individual pyramidal cells of the cerebral cortex act like miniature switchboard operators. Each cell receives information from several thousand lines. If the signals make sense, the line is opened, and the information is relayed onward. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have now shown for the first time that contact points between specific neuron types are clustered in groups on the target neuron. It is probable that signals are coordinated with each other in this way to make them more "convincing".
A detailed new map by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis lays out the landscape of the human cerebral cortex. The map will accelerate progress in the study of brain diseases, as well as help to elucidate what makes us unique as a species.
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) are studying how cognitive therapy that uses mindfulness techniques, such as meditation, quiet reflection and facilitator-led discussion, may serve as an adjunct to pharmacological treatments for youth with anxiety disorders.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first focused ultrasound device to treat essential tremor, the most common movement disorder, in patients who do not respond to medication. The scalpel-free approach has been pioneered by Jeff Elias, MD, at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, who led an international clinical trial that demonstrated the safety and effectiveness of the device.
Two new grants from the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) will enable New Yorkers with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and their families, to get the most comprehensive care and support services available in the New York City area. NYU Langone Medical Center is launching its Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias Family Support Program and is establishing a Center of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease.
In research using patient medical records, investigators from Johns Hopkins and Sheppard Pratt Health System report that people with serious mental disorders who were hospitalized for mania were more likely to be on antibiotics to treat active infections than a group of people without a mental disorder.
People who selectively recalled positive information over neutral and negative information performed worse on memory tests conducted by University of California, Irvine neurobiologists, who said the results suggest that this discriminating remembrance may be a marker for early stages of memory loss in the elderly.
Using a robust model for Parkinson’s disease, University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers and colleagues have discovered an interaction in neurons that contributes to Parkinson’s disease, and they have shown that drugs now under development may block the process.
New findings published today by a team of researchers led by Dr. Andres Lozano at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre (KNC) of Toronto Western Hospital (TWH) have provided further insight into the effects of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
Available research suggests that noninvasive stimulation of a specific brain area can reduce food cravings—particularly for high-calorie, "appetitive" foods, according to a review in the Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
Abnormalities in brain regions involved in forming insight may help explain why some people with anorexia nervosa have trouble recognizing their dangerous, dysfunctional eating habits.
Cedars-Sinai scientists are seeking to build an improved stem-cell model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to accelerate progress toward a cure for the devastating neurological disorder. Their findings demonstrate that current models can be enhanced by the aging of motor neurons to show how ALS damages cells later in life.
Mapping damage to the brain’s white matter connections after stroke can predict long-term language deficits, improve the understanding of how language is processed in the brain and potentially inform a course of rehabilitative therapy that would be more effective.
St. Joseph's Hospital -
A new study from Lawson Health Research Institute and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) has cast doubt on the clinical significance of brain deposits of gadolinium (a chemical contrast agent commonly used to enhance MRI imaging).
Contrary to popular belief, taking estrogen after menopause may not affect the memory and thinking abilities of healthy women no matter when the treatment is started. The research is published in the July 20, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The confidence in our decision-making serves to both gauge errors and to revise our approach, New York University neuroscientists have found. Their study offers insights into the hierarchical nature of how we make choices over extended periods of time, ranging from medical diagnoses and treatment to the strategies we use to invest our money.
A toxic Alzheimer’s protein can spread through the brain via the extracellular space that surrounds the brain’s neurons, finds a study from Columbia University Medical Center.
Penn Medicine has established the Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center (PNGC) as a national focal point for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) genetics research. The Center, an interdisciplinary program that brings together faculty members in neurodegenerative disorders, human genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, and biostatistics.
A new study on infantile memory formation in rats points to the importance of critical periods in early-life learning on functional development of the brain. The research, conducted by scientists at New York University’s Center for Neural Science, reveals the significance of learning experiences over the first two to four years of human life.
Could immune system problems contribute to an inability to have normal social interactions? The answer appears to be yes, and that finding could have great implications for neurological conditions such as autism-spectrum disorders and schizophrenia.
Meditation has long been promoted as a way to feel more at peace. But research from a Texas Tech University faculty member shows it can significantly improve attention, working memory, creativity, immune function, emotional regulation, self-control, cognitive and school performance and healthy habits while reducing stress.
Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science have published an in-depth analysis of a comprehensive molecular atlas of brain development in the non-human primate. This analysis uncovers features of the genetic code underlying brain development in our close evolutionary relative, while revealing distinct features of human brain development by comparison. The study is based on the NIH Blueprint Non-Human Primate (NHP) Atlas, a publicly available resource created by the Allen Institute and colleagues at the University of California, Davis and the California National Primate Research Center. This resource enables researchers to understand the underpinnings of both healthy brain development and many neuropsychiatric diseases. Analysis of the atlas is featured this week in the journal Nature.
Working memory can be thought of as short-term memory, temporarily holding ideas and recent events in the mind for quick recall. Working memory often declines with age; it may also be susceptible to interactions between age and alcohol use. Frontal theta power (FTP) and posterior alpha power (PAP) are electrophysiological measures of brain activity associated with cognitive effort and maintenance of visual information. This study looks at alcohol effects on FTP and PAP during a working memory task in younger and older social drinkers.
Japanese researchers centered at Nagoya University reveal a role for orexin neurons of the hypothalamus when mice respond to painful stimuli, and suggest a link between stimulus response and consciousness.
Every time you move around, you are turning on genes in your brain. A study in mice at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that if such genes get stuck in the “on” position, the consequences can include faulty brain wiring that affects learning and memory.