Newsline — Thursday, May 29, 2014 13:00
Study: High-school Athletes’ Concussion Rates Doubled in Seven Years
Tracking the Source of “Selective Attention” Problems in Brain-injured Vets
Thursday, May 29, 2014 9:00
An estimated 15 to 20 percent of U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from some form of traumatic brain injury (TBI) sustained during their deployment, with most injuries caused by blast waves from exploded military ordnance. While obvious cognitive symptoms of minor TBI can dissipate within just a few days, blast-exposed veterans may continue to have problems performing simple auditory tasks that require them to focus attention on one sound source and ignore others, an ability known as “selective auditory attention.” According to a new study by a team of Boston University neuroscientists, such apparent “hearing” problems actually may be caused by diffuse injury to the brain’s prefrontal lobe. For their study, researchers presented a selective auditory attention task to 10 vets with mild TBI and to 17 control subjects without brain injuries. The researchers found that blast-exposed veterans with TBI performed worse on the task — that is, they had difficulty controlling auditory attention — “and in all of the TBI veterans who performed well enough for us to measure their neural…
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Antidepressant May Slow Alzheimer’s Disease
Wednesday, May 28, 2014 13:00
According to new research from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Pennsylvania, a commonly prescribed antidepressant can reduce production of amyloid beta, the main ingredient in Alzheimer’s brain plaques. Their findings recently published in Science Translational Medicine, the scientists found that the antidepressant citalopram stopped the growth of plaques in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. And in young adults who were cognitively healthy, a single dose of the antidepressant lowered by 37 percent the production of amyloid beta. Although the findings are encouraging, the researchers caution that it would be premature to prescribe antidepressants solely to slow the development of Alzheimer’s disease. “Antidepressants appear to be significantly reducing amyloid beta production, and that’s exciting,” said senior author John Cirrito, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at Washington University. “Until we can more definitively prove that these drugs help slow or stop Alzheimer’s in humans, the risks aren’t worth it. There is still much more work to do.” To learn more about this study, click here.
Brain May Never Fully Recover from Exposure to Paint, Glue, Degreasers
Wednesday, May 28, 2014 9:00
People who are exposed to paint, glue or degreaser fumes at work may experience memory and thinking problems decades after their exposure, according to a study recently published in Neurology. The study involved 2,143 retirees from the French national utility company. Researchers assessed the workers’ lifetime exposure to chlorinated solvents, petroleum solvents and benzene, including the timing of last exposure and lifetime dosage. Participants took eight tests of their memory and thinking skills an average of 10 years after they had retired, when they were an average age of 66. A total of 59 percent of the participants had impairment on one to three of the eight tests; 23 percent had impairment on four or more tests; 18 percent had no impaired scores. The research found that people with high, recent exposure to solvents were at greatest risk for memory and thinking deficits. “The people with high exposure within the last 12 to 30 years showed impairment in almost all areas of memory and thinking, including those not usually associated with solvent exposure,” said study…
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Scientists Slow Brain Tumor Growth in Mice
Tuesday, May 27, 2014 13:00
Researchers have identified a protein that can be used to slow down or speed up the growth of brain tumors in mice. They report that they have discovered a way to slow tumor growth in a mouse model of brain cancer by altering the process by which genes are converted into proteins. While it was known that the messenger RNA molecules associated with the cancerous cells were shorter than those with healthy cells, the mechanism by which this occurred was not understood. The research team discovered that a protein called CFIm25 is critical to keeping messenger RNA long in healthy cells and that its reduction promotes tumor growth. The key research finding in this study, reported online in the journal Nature, was that restoring CFIm25 levels in brain tumors dramatically reduced their growth. “Understanding how messenger RNA length is regulated will allow researchers to begin to develop new strategies aimed at interfering with the process that causes unusual messenger RNA shortening during the formation of tumors,” said Eric J. Wagner, PhD, of The University of…
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Migraine Attacks May Increase Following Stress “Let Down”
Friday, May 23, 2014 13:00
According to a new study conducted by researchers at the Montefiore Headache Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, migraine sufferers who experienced reduced stress from one day to the next are at significantly increased risk of migraine onset on the subsequent day. Although stress has long been believed to be a common headache trigger, in this study, researchers found that relaxation following heightened stress was an even more significant trigger for migraine attacks. Results were strongest during the first six hours where decline in stress was associated with a nearly five-fold increased risk of migraine onset. The hormone cortisol, which rises during times of stress and reduces pain, may contribute to the triggering of headache during periods of relaxation. This study highlights the importance of stress management and healthy lifestyle habits for people living with migraines. To read more about this study, click here.
Neuroscientists Investigate How the Brain Repairs Itself After Stroke
Friday, May 23, 2014 9:00
Researchers at Virginia Tech are investigating how the brain develops “collateral” blood vessels which re-route blood flow after a vessel becomes blocked following a stroke, in order to potentially find better or new stroke treatments. When a brain suffers from a blockage or clot, a network of replacement vessels, known as collaterals, can restore oxygen and nutrients to damaged tissue. Researchers are searching for answers about the brain’s natural network of collateral blood vessels, as well as its ability to remodel them after stroke and traumatic brain injury — two areas that largely remain a mystery. The lead author of the study hypothesizes that a family of Eph receptors (molecules that guide development and growth of nerve fibers in the brain) operate as “negative receptors” in the formation of collateral vessels. These receptors may make it difficult for the brain to initially form and repair collaterals, limiting the brain’s ability to mend itself after a stroke. To read more about this study, click here.
How the Brain Recognizes Familiar Music
Thursday, May 22, 2014 13:00
Research from McGill University revealed that the brain’s motor network helps people remember and recognize music that they have performed in the past better than music they have only heard. The study sheds light on how humans perceive and produce sounds, and may help investigate whether or not motor learning could improve or protect memory or cognitive impairment in aging populations. For the study, researchers recruited 20 skilled pianists. The group was asked to learn simple melodies by either hearing them several times or performing them several times on a piano. Pianists then heard all of the melodies they had learned (some of which contained wrong notes) while their brain’s electric signals were measured using electroencephalography (EEG). The results of the study showed that the pianists were better at recognizing pitch changes in melodies they had performed earlier. Additionally, the research team found that EEG measurements revealed larger changes in brain waves and increased motor activity for previously performed melodies than for heard melodies about 200 milliseconds after the wrong notes. This reveals that the…
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Autism and Intellectual Disability Linked with Environmental Factors
Thursday, May 22, 2014 9:00
An analysis of 100 million U.S. medical records revealed that autism and intellectual disability (ID) rates are correlated with incidence of congenital malformations in newborn males, an indicator of possible congenital exposure to harmful environmental factors, such as pesticides. Autism rates — after adjustment for gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic and geopolitical factors — jump by 283 percent for every one percent increase in frequency of malformations in a county. Although autism and intellectual disability have genetic components, environmental causes are thought to play a role. The research team, from the University of Chicago, used congenital malformations of the reproductive systems in males as an indicator of parental exposure to toxins (male fetuses are particularly sensitive to environmental toxins). While the effect of vaccines was not analyzed as part of this study, the research team noted that the geographic clustering of autism and ID rates is evidence that if vaccines have a role, it’s a very weak one, as vaccines are given uniformly across the U.S. To read more about this study, click here.
Helmet Therapy for Infant Positional Skull Deformation Discouraged
Wednesday, May 21, 2014 13:00
In a recent study, researchers from the Netherlands assessed 84 babies who had moderate or severe positional skull deformation to determine the benefit of helmet therapy for infants with flat-head syndrome. From the age of six months, half of the infants were required to wear custom made closely fitting helmets for 23 hours per day, for a six-month period. The remaining infants had no treatment at all. After measuring the head shape of all the infants once they reached age two, the research team discovered that the infants who wore the helmets showed no significant improvements compared with those who received no treatment. Helmet therapy led to 25.6 percent of infants making a full recovery from their positional skull deformation, while 22.5 percent of infants who received no treatment made a full recovery, which the researchers deemed as “no significant difference” between groups. To read more about this study, click here.