Feature Channels: Neuro

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Other topics include repairing injured nerves, busted heart attack treatment, decorative brain molecules, and more...

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Structural brain abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia, providing insight into how the condition may develop and respond to treatment, have been identified in an internationally collaborative study led by a Georgia State University scientist.

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Researchers at Brown University examined three magnetically programmable shunt valves to see if the magnetic field emissions of headphones can cause unintentional changes in shunt valve settings. Based on their findings, the researchers state that it is highly unlikely that commercially available headphones will interfere with programmable shunt valve settings.

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Researchers from Vienna examined elderly patients and adult patients receiving antiplatelet therapy who had presented with mild head injury to see if S100B protein levels could help identify whether intracranial bleeding was present. The researchers found that patients with serum S100B levels < 0.105 µg/L were very unlikely to have intracranial hemorrhage.

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Cedars-Sinai researchers have successfully tested two new methods for preserving cognition in laboratory mice that exhibit features of Alzheimer’s disease by using white blood cells from bone marrow and a drug for multiple sclerosis to control immune response in the brain.

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An estimated 65 percent of ischemic stroke survivors experience cognitive impairment and decline. However, little is known about the varying roles of cognitive risk and protective factors before, during and after stroke.

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Studying brain scans and cerebrospinal fluid of healthy adults, scientists have shown that changes in key biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease during midlife may help identify those who will develop dementia years later, according to new research.

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New research suggests that a molecule commonly found “decorating” brain cells in higher animals, including humans, may affect brain structure. The study showed that small changes made in how sialic acid attaches to cell surfaces can cause damaged brain structure, poor motor skills, hyperactivity and learning difficulties in mice.

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Other topics include memories and protein, physics and gas mileage, agriculture and food safety, vaccine for Dengue, retinoblastoma proteins in cancer progression, and more.

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An international team, led by a University of Adelaide genetics expert, has made a breakthrough discovery which is expected to help thousands of young girls worldwide who are suffering from a rare yet debilitating form of epilepsy.

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A new study suggests that genes may not be to blame for the increased risk of heart disease some studies have shown in people with migraine, especially those with migraine with aura. The research is published during Headache/Migraine Awareness Month in the inaugural issue of the journal Neurology® Genetics, an open access, or free to the public, online-only, peer-reviewed journal from the American Academy of Neurology. Aura are sensations that come before the headache, often visual disturbances such as flashing lights.

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Research from Eric Kandel’s lab has uncovered further evidence of a system in the brain that persistently maintains memories for long periods of time.

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By using intrinsic optical signals (IOS) imaging, researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, demonstrated that, contrary to what was thought, another physiological variation is involved: the activated neurons swell due to the massive entry of water. This discovery provides evidence that a much finer analysis of the functioning of the brain - and of its dysfunctions - is possible.

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New devices called stent retrievers are enabling physicians to stop strokes in their tracks. For the first time, new guidelines from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association recommend the treatment for certain stroke patients.

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Other topics include neurology, obesity, statins, and the risks of wearing high heels.

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Light switches for neurons have made enormous contributions to brain research by giving investigators access to “on switches” for brain cells. But, finding “off switches” has been much more challenging. Addressing the challenge, biochemists in the Center for Membrane Biology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) discovered a new family of light-activated proteins that work as “off switches.”

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Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have discovered that histones are steadily replaced in brain cells throughout life

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In the first study of its kind, UCLA and United Kingdom researchers found that neurons in a specific brain region play a key role in rapidly forming memories about every day events, a finding that may result in a better understanding of memory loss and new methods to fight it in Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.

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Using clinical data collected over the past decade through a U.S. cancer registry, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine demonstrated that significant strides have been made in improving the survival of adult patients with low-grade gliomas, a slow-growing yet deadly form of primary brain cancer.

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The brain region that helps people tell whether an object is near or far may also guide how emotionally close they feel to others and how they rank them socially, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published today in the journal Neuron. The findings promise to yield new insights into the social deficits that accompany psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and depression.

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Researchers find that nerve stimulation can improve the function of peripheral nerves damaged by spinal cord injury (SCI). This technique may be a new approach to preventing long-term changes in nerve and muscle function after SCI and improving SCI rehabilitation outcomes.This research 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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Researchers at NYU have developed ways to measure both the objective probability density functions (pdfs) for a simple motor task and the corresponding subjective pdfs.

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Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have found that a type of genetic material called “microRNA” plays surprisingly different roles in the formation of memory in animal models. In some cases, these RNAs increase memory, while others decrease it.

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Clinicians testing the drug dasatinib, approved for several blood cancers, had hoped it would slow the aggressive growth of the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma; however, clinical trials to date have not found any benefit. Researchers at Mayo Clinic, who conducted one of those clinical trials, believe they know why dasatinib failed — and what to do about it.

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Male and female mice use different immune cells to process chronic pain, indicating that different therapies for different genders could better target the problem.

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New research reveals for the first time that pain is processed in male and female mice using different cells. These findings have far-reaching implications for our basic understanding of pain, how we develop the next generation of medications for chronic pain, and the way we execute basic biomedical research using mice.

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An analysis of the results of more than 16,000 brain and spine surgeries suggests patients have nothing to fear from having residents — physicians-in-training — assist in those operations. The contributions of residents, who work under the supervision and alongside senior physicians, do nothing to increase patients’ risks of postoperative complications or of dying within 30 days of the surgery, the analysis showed.

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Physicists have found that intense visual input forces the brain into a brief moment of chaos, but the visual cortex spontaneously returns the brain to its optimal function.

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Researchers have discovered a thick band of microtubules in certain neurons in the retina that they believe acts as a transport road for mitochondria that help provide energy required for visual processing.

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A new map of emergency stroke care in America shows just how much of a patchwork system we still have for delivering the most effective stroke treatment. And thousands of people a year may end up unnecessarily disabled as a result.

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Researchers at the University of Kentucky's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging have completed a study that revealed differences in the way brain inflammation -- considered a key component of AD-- is expressed in different subsets of patients, in particular people with Down syndrome (DS) and AD.

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UC San Diego School of Medicine researchers report that the amyloid cascade hypothesis, long believed to describe the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, is not a fixed and invariable sequence of events. Rather, early indicators or biomarkers of the neurodegenerative condition vary by individual, making preclinical diagnoses more challenging.

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A new study suggests that errors on memory and thinking tests may signal Alzheimer’s up to 18 years before the disease can be diagnosed. The research is published in the June 24, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Think the nest of cables under your desk is bad? Try keeping the trillions of connections crisscrossing your brain organized and free of tangles. A new study by UC San Francisco researchers reveals this seemingly intractable job may be simpler than it appears.

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The first test in a mammalian model of a potential new class of drugs to treat Parkinson’s disease shows abatement of neurodegeneration in the brains of test rats and no significant toxicities.

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During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US combat support hospitals treated at least 650 children with severe, combat-related head injuries, according to a special article in the July issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

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In addition to its effect on chronic tics, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can change the brain function of people with Tourette syndrome.

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Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have profiled key features of the genetic material inside three types of brain cells and found vast differences in the patterns of chemical modifications that affect how the genes in each type of neuron are regulated. The analysis was made possible by a new method of collecting and purifying the nuclei of specific kinds of cells. Doing this type of study on cells in brain tissue has been challenging because the cells are densely packed and intimately intertwined.

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Sixty-seven patients from the Hermelin Brain Tumor Center at Henry Ford Hospital and their families made important contributions to a national cancer study that proposes a change in how some brain tumors are classified – and ultimately treated. Published in the July 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the study reveals that a tumor’s DNA is key to determining if a lower-grade malignant brain tumor (glioma) may rapidly progress to glioblastoma.

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Other topics include: breast cancer, blood thinners and surgery, cognitive impairment, and new ultra-dark galaxies discovered.

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By identifying in spinal fluid how the characteristic mutant proteins of Huntington’s disease spread from cell to cell, UC Irvine scientists and colleagues have created a new method to quickly and accurately track the presence and proliferation of these neuron-damaging compounds – a discovery that may accelerate the development of new drugs to treat this incurable disease.

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Our brains track moving objects by applying one of the algorithms your phone’s GPS uses, according to researchers at the University of Rochester. This same algorithm also explains why we are fooled by several motion-related optical illusions, including the sudden “break” of baseball’s well known “curveball illusion.”

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Topics include: women's health, cancer care, research at the Large Hadron Collider, dementia drug treatment, dermatology, skin cancer, breast cancer, smoking risks, and genetics.

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Diabetes is a known risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia, age-related conditions that affect memory and thinking skills. However, little is known about how the diabetes-cognitive decline link compares across cultures.

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In 1999 Danish scientist Per Bak made the startling proposal that the brain remained stable for much the same reason a sand pile does; many small avalanches hold it at a balance point, where --in the brain's case -- information processing is optimized. Now scientists have showed for the first time that a brain receiving and processing sensory input follows these dynamics.

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CGRP monoclonal antibodies appear to significantly reduce the frequency of migraine in human clinical trials, potentially changing the landscape for migraine treatment. Headache specialist Sid Kapoor, MD, discusses the enormous potential -- and pitfalls-- facing the drug class' road to FDA approval.

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An amino acid whose role in the body has been all but a mystery appears to act as a potent seizure inhibitor in mice, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins.

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Topics include: treating advanced skin cancer, big data and bioenergy, cancer research, 10 reasons to eat quinoa, sleep issues in the nursing field, advances in cancer surgery, genes for sleep, brain receptor for cocaine addiction, and nano imaging on insect adaptations.

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Long-term administration of a drug that mimics the hunger-signaling hormone ghrelin protected Alzheimer’s disease-model mice from memory deterioration, despite a high-glycemic-index diet.

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A new experiment shows that auditory melodies can enhance a musician's visual awareness of written music, particularly when the two match.