Newsline — Tuesday, December 6, 2011 0:00
Research Shows How Gamma Knife Surgery Can Benefit Epilepsy Patients
New Neuroscience Clinical Trials Center To Aid Patients with Rare Neurological Diseases
Monday, December 5, 2011 10:30
Physician-scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital for Einstein, have received a grant to establish a clinical site for the Network for Excellence in Neuroscience Clinical Trials (NeuroNEXT). One of only 25 federally-funded centers like it in the country, the Einstein-Montefiore site was created in partnership with Einstein affiliates Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan and the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. The NeuroNEXT network and its centers were established through grants from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which is part of the National Institutes of Health. NeuroNEXT was created to facilitate Phase II clinical trials — conducted to assess how well, and at what frequency and dosage a drug delivers effective results — for rare neurological diseases, which face difficulty securing funding from the industry, and recruiting and retaining participants. Should a promising drug be identified, enrolling enough participants requires the identification and enlistment of multiple sites nationwide, each of which can only contribute a few patients. In addition,…
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Article Questions Existence or Location of ‘Pitch Center’ in the Brain
Friday, December 2, 2011 10:30
Pitch is the perceptual feature of sound that’s fundamental to human hearing, allowing one to hear musical melodies and harmonies as well as recognize inflections of speech. In the past, studies have suggested that a particular hotspot in the brain might be responsible for perceiving pitch. However, auditory neuroscientists continue to debate whether this “pitch center” exists. In a new review article by Daniel Bendor, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the author discusses a recent study that claims this pitch center may not exist after all or, alternatively, may not be located where previous research has suggested. “Does a Pitch Center Exist in Auditory Cortex?” appears in the Articles in Press section of the Journal of Neurophysiology, which is published by the American Physiological Society. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Krembil Neuroscience Centre Opens First Neurovascular Unit in Canada
Thursday, December 1, 2011 10:30
Canada’s first neurovascular unit (NVU) opened this week at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre, Toronto Western Hospital, which is part of the University Health Network. The 20 bed in-patient unit is designed to provide patients with stroke and neurovascular conditions such as aneurysms and diseased blood vessels in the brain with the most optimal setting for treatment as well as the initial stages of recovery. “We designed our neurovascular unit based on extensive research that shows stroke units in hospitals improve patient outcomes,” said Dr. Frank Silver, neurologist and director of the University Health Network Stroke Program. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Frequent ‘Heading’ in Soccer Increases Risk of Brain Injury and Cognitive Impairment
Wednesday, November 30, 2011 15:28
Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, have found that repeatedly heading a soccer ball increases the risk for brain injury and cognitive impairment. They discovered this through the use of advanced imaging techniques and cognitive tests. The imaging portion of the findings was presented at the Radiological Society of North America’s (RSNA’s) annual meeting in Chicago this week. The researchers used an advanced MRI-based imaging technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) on 38 amateur soccer players (average age: 30.8 years) who had all played the sport since childhood. They were asked to recall how many times they headed the ball during the past year. (Heading is when players deliberately hit or field the soccer ball with their head.) Researchers ranked the players based on heading frequency and then compared the brain images of the most frequent headers with the rest. They found that frequent headers showed brain injury similar to that seen in patients with concussion, also known…
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Cedars-Sinai to Study Positive Role of Normal Protein in Ischemic Stroke
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 10:00
The National Institutes of Health has awarded Cedars-Sinai’s Department of Neurology a four-year, $1.4 million grant to study an unexpected recent discovery: After ischemic stroke — which is caused by a clogged artery, without bleeding into the brain — a normal protein that plays a positive role in blood clotting escapes intact arteries and damages healthy brain cells. “We knew thrombin leaked out during hemorrhagic strokes — those in which an artery ruptures — and we knew that in large amounts it killed brain cells,” said Patrick D. Lyden, MD, chair of the Department of Neurology, and the Carmen and Louis Warschaw Chair in Neurology at Cedars-Sinai. “But we decided to see if there was thrombin after ischemic stroke, and, surprisingly, there was a lot, and it was causing major damage to brain cells. When we injected a drug that counters the effects of thrombin, stroke symptoms got better.” For more information, click here to read the full release.
Study Reveals Benefits of Treating Patients Battling Severe Depression with Deep Brain Stimulation
Monday, November 28, 2011 21:42
A new study sponsored by St. Jude Medical, Inc. shows significant improvements in depression symptoms among patients who are highly treatment-resistant, according to the results of the first multi-center pilot study of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for major depressive disorder, published last week by the Journal of Neurosurgery. The study was conducted at three research facilities in Canada, and designed to replicate and build upon an earlier study by Dr. Andres Lozano and Dr. Helen Mayberg that was published in the journal Neuron in 2005. Research results showed that DBS therapy targeting an area of the brain called Brodmann Area 25 provided noticeable improvement in depression symptoms and increased overall quality of life for patients who typically are unresponsive to treatment. The study enrolled 21 patients who suffered from depression for 20 years on average, had tried in excess of 16 depression medications and were considered disabled or unable to work at the time of enrollment. For more information, click here to read the full release.
New Collaborative Spine Research Foundation Will Fund Spine-Care Research
Friday, November 18, 2011 9:00
Two flagship foundations for advancing spine care through support for research, the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation (NREF) and the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF), have announced the formation of a collaborative grant program that will broadly cultivate multidisciplinary clinical spine research. OREF, formed in 1955 by members of three national orthopaedic societies, and NREF, formed in 1981 by the American Association of Neurosurgeons (AAN), will jointly establish the Collaborative Spine Research Foundation (CSRF), which will be formed as a non-profit organization. The CSRF’s activities will center on advancing the science and practice of the highest quality spine care. The CSRF board of directors, comprising equal numbers of neurosurgeons and orthopaedic surgeons, will oversee the establishment of grant and award criteria; the establishment and enforcement of conflict-of-interest standards; the recruitment of qualified, independent peer-review teams; and the development of strategies to secure financial support from spine-care stakeholders. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Research Shows New Means of Recording Brain Activity
Thursday, November 17, 2011 15:37
A team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia recently developed and tested a new high-resolution, ultra-thin device that can record brain activity from the cortical surface without the use of penetrating electrodes. The device could make possible a whole new generation of brain-computer interfaces for treating neurological and psychiatric illness and research. Research results were published in Nature Neuroscience. “The new technology we have created can conform to the brain’s unique geometry, and records and maps activity at resolutions that have not been possible before,” says Brian Litt, MD, the study’s senior author and associate professor of neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine and Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. “Using this device, we can explore the brain networks underlying normal function and disease with much more precision, and it’s likely to change our understanding of memory, vision, hearing, and many other normal functions and diseases.” Implantable brain devices could be inserted in less invasive operations, Litt continues, and, by mapping circuits involved in epilepsy, paralysis, depression and other “network brain…
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EEG Machine Reveals Awareness in Some Vegetative Patients
Friday, November 11, 2011 16:59
Researchers at The Brain and Mind Institute at The University of Western Ontario in Canada, in collaboration with the University of Liege in Belgium, have discovered that they can detect conscious awareness in some patients thought to be in permanent vegetative states using an inexpensive electroencephalography (EEG) device that measures electrical activity in the brain. The use of an EEG machine, which easily can be transported to a patient’s bedside, follows an earlier breakthrough that employed a functional MRI scanner to determine whether some people in a vegetative state actually were consciously aware, but unable to physically respond to stimuli. The results of this new research have been published by The Lancet. For more information about this study, click here to read the full release.