Newsline — Friday, March 16, 2012 8:00
Johns Hopkins Study Challenges Benefit of Certain Anticancer Drugs
Study Links Maternal Obesity to Impaired Brain Development in Premature Infants
Friday, March 16, 2012 8:00
A new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center reveals that maternal obesity may contribute to cognitive impairment in extremely premature babies. “Although in the past decade, medical advances have improved the survival rate of babies born at less than seven months, they are still at very high risk for mental developmental delays compared with full-term infants,” says Jennifer Helderman, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study. “This study shows that obesity doesn’t just affect the mother’s health, but might also affect the development of the baby.” For more information, click here to read the full release.
Hair-like Structures Allow Inner Ear to Communicate with Brain
Thursday, March 15, 2012 8:00
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have discovered that the hair cells of the inner ear have a “root” extension that may allow them to communicate with nerve cells and the brain to regulate sensitivity to sound vibrations and head position. Their discovery is reported in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The hair-like structures located in the inner ear, called stereocilia, are fairly rigid and interlinked at their tops by structures called tip-links. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Scientists Demonstrate Mechanism for Encoding Memory
Wednesday, March 14, 2012 8:00
Memory encoding in the brain has remained mysterious, despite an entire century of research. Neuronal synaptic connection strengths are involved, but synaptic components are short-lived, while memories last lifetimes, suggesting that synaptic information is encoded and hard-wired at a deeper, finer-grained molecular scale. Now, physicists Travis Craddock and Jack Tuszynski of the University of Alberta, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff of the University of Arizona, are demonstrating a plausible mechanism for encoding synaptic memory in microtubules, major components of the structural cytoskeleton within neurons — that’s according to an article that appears in the March 8 issue of the journal PLoS Computational Biology. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Protein to Blame for Parkinson’s Disease
Friday, March 9, 2012 8:00
Millions of people suffer from Parkinson’s disease — a disorder of the nervous system that affects movement and progresses over time. As the world’s population ages, it is estimated that the number of people with this disease will rise sharply. Yet despite several effective therapies that treat Parkinson’s symptoms, nothing slows its progression. While the cause of the disease remains unknown, clues point to one culprit: a protein called α-synuclein that has been found to be common to all Parkinson’s patients. This protein is considered a pathway to the disease when it binds together in “clumps,” or aggregates, and becomes toxic, killing the brain’s neurons. For more information, click here to read the full release
Surgeon Education Reduces Hardware Wastage in Spine Surgery
Thursday, March 8, 2012 8:00
An educational program for surgeons can reduce unnecessary hardware “explantations” (the placement and removal of hardware/instrumentation) during spinal surgery, according to a study published in the March 1 issue of Spine. Surgeon education reduced the rate of spinal hardware wastage by nearly one-third at the study hospital, resulting in a cost savings of more than $20,000 per year. “It is an obligation that spine providers are part of identifying and addressing any process or event that does not add value to the care of the patient,” says Kevin McGuire, MD, MS, of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Clinical Trial Examines Non-invasive Surgery Options for Epileptic Patients
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 8:00
Medications do not effectively control epilepsy and stop seizures for about 25 percent of patients who suffer from the disease. Instead, surgery is the answer for some epileptic patients. In the past, this meant a craniotomy, which requires a surgeon to open the patient’s skull and remove the brain lesion-causing epilepsy. University of Virginia School of Medicine neurologist Mark S. Quigg, MD, is helping to lead an international clinical trial examining the effectiveness of Gamma Knife radiosurgery as a non-invasive alternative for treating patients with a certain type of epilepsy — mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. The Gamma Knife delivers focused beams of radiation guided by MRI to the brain lesion in hopes of damaging the lesion and preventing it from causing epileptic seizures. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Researchers Investigate How Memories Are Made and Mental Illness Can Be Avoided
Tuesday, March 6, 2012 15:00
Johns Hopkins scientists say they have new clues as to how memories are made as well as how drugs might someday be used to stop disruptions in the process that lead to mental illness and brain-wasting diseases. They came to these conclusions after studying tiny bits of genetic material that control protein formation in the brain. According to research that appears in the March 2 issue of Cell, the researchers report that certain microRNAs — genetic elements that control which proteins get turned into cells — are the key to controlling the actions of what they call brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), long linked to brain cell survival, normal learning and memory boosting. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Research Reveals How Brain Reacts to Deceptive Advertising
Monday, March 5, 2012 8:00
New research done by a North Carolina University professor shows that several specific regions of the brain are activated in a two-part process when humans are exposed to deceptive advertising. This research opens the door to further studies that could help investigators understand how brain injury and aging may affect susceptibility to fraud or misleading marketing. The aforementioned study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to capture images of the brain while study participants viewed a series of print advertisements. The fMRI images let researchers determine how consumers’ brains respond to potentially deceptive advertising. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Eye Movements Indicate Coordination of Arms
Friday, March 2, 2012 8:00
New York University neuroscientists have discovered that humans make eye movements earlier or later in order to coordinate with the movements of their arms. Furthermore, the study points to a mechanism in the brain that allows for this coordination, and may have implications for rehabilitation and prosthetics. Research results appear in the journal Neuron. Researchers sought out to understand the neurological processes behind eye and arm movements. For example, when you reach for an object, what goes on in our brains to cause your eyes and arms to sync? Such coordination is key to the way different brain systems communicate with each other. These undertakings are surprisingly complicated; due to differences in weight, for instance, the arm takes longer than the eye to move. For more information, click here to read the full release.