Newsline — Friday, April 17, 2015 9:00
MRI Based on Sugar Molecules Raises Possibility of Cancer Diagnosis Without Biopsies
Brainworks Program Offers Students Interaction with Neuroscience
Thursday, April 16, 2015 13:00
For the 17th year since its creation, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles presented their educational Brainworks seminar for junior high students regarding brain science and healthy habits, as part of an ongoing effort to educate the public on neuroscience, as well as engaging children with the medical field. The 140 students who participated learned more about the importance of a regular exercise routine and how that helps improve brain health. The event featured keynote speaker Dean Sherzai, MD, director of the medical center’s Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention Program. “We are moving closer to understanding the role of exercise in potentially changing the course of Alzheimer’s,” Sherzai said. “This is important because once Alzheimer’s is established in the brain, no existing drugs can slow it down.” Activities during the seminar included surgical simulations, neuropathology demonstrations, therapy, instrument collections and the newly added exercise station emphasizing the benefits of physical activity on long-term brain health. The seminar’s featured speakers, who highlighted the various directions and occupations within the field, demonstrated ways for those interested in pursuing neuroscience or neurosurgery to get involved…
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Brain’s Ability to Heal Itself Offers Hope for New TBI Treatment
Thursday, April 16, 2015 9:00
In an extensive piece published in the journal Expert Opinion on Investigational Drugs, researchers from the Henry Ford Hospital discuss the pioneering work underway in Detroit, seeking to understand and repair brain function at the molecular level after a traumatic brain injury (TBI). “To date, all attempts at treating brain injury with experimental drugs have failed once testing moved from animal studies to clinical trials in humans,” said the lead researcher of the paper. “Although this is disappointing, we believe innovations now at the preclinical stage hold great promise for a deeper understanding of traumatic brain injury and how to treat it.” Over the past three decades, more than 30 clinical trials have ended in failure. The new approach to TBI therapy aims at enhancing restorative, or “neuroplastic,” processes as they work together to improve neurological recovery, building on the brain’s innate ability to repair itself both physically and functionally. To read more about this study, click here.
High-Frequency Surpasses Traditional Spinal-cord Stimulation in First Controlled Trial
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 13:00
A groundbreaking trial testing spinal cord stimulation (SCS) techniques has revealed that higher frequency SCS utilizing the 10kHz (HF10) is more effective in application, pain relief and sustainment compared to the lower-level frequencies that are typically used. Researchers from Advanced Pain Therapy in Hattiesburg, Miss. presented their research at the 31st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, which detailed their side-by-side analysis of low-frequency and high-frequency applications — with particular detail regarding the practice of inducing parathesia with low-frequency stimulation. While low-frequency treatments are able to induce parathesia as a form of reactive pain treatment, subjects treated with high-frequency stimulation appeared to have higher quality of life and pain relief without this commonly induced feature. “These results provide important comparative effectiveness data for healthcare providers and clinically relevant information for pain physicians, patients and payers,” the author said. Future research will determine the full application range of high-frequency SCS to determine when low-frequency practice can be replaced or updated. To learn more about this study, click here.
Drug Restores Brain Function and Memory in Early Alzheimer’s Disease
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 11:36
In a recent study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, a novel therapeutic approach for an existing drug reverses a condition in elderly patients who are at high risk for dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease. The drug, commonly used to treat epilepsy, calms hyperactivity in the brain of patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), a clinically recognized condition in which memory impairment is greater than expected for a person’s age — and which greatly increases risk for Alzheimer’s dementia, according to the study published in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical. The findings validate the Johns Hopkins team’s initial conclusions, published three years ago in the journal Neuron. They also closely match the results in animal studies performed by the team and scientists elsewhere. In the future, neuroscientists hope the therapy will be tested in a large-scale, longer-term clinical trial. To read more about this study, click here.
Brain Tumor Cells Destroyed by Mitochondrial “Smart Bomb”
Tuesday, April 14, 2015 13:00
In a study recently published in the journal ChemMedChem, scientists from the Houston Methodist Kenneth R. Peak Brain & Pituitary Tumor Center discovered an experimental drug that attacks brain tumor tissue by crippling its mitochondrial cells (energy source). The drug, called MP-MUS, has passed tests in both animal models and human-tissue and destroyed 90 to 95 percent of malignant glioma cells. Additionally, in other experiments, the drug did not seem to adversely affect healthy human brain cells (in vitro). This study compliments an extensive, soon-to-be-published study showing the same drug can treat human brain cancer growth in the brains of mice. “Our past work has shown that MP-MUS has very low toxicity until it gets into tumor cells. Once it arrives, it is changed to its active form, doing a lot of damage where we want it to, leaving healthy brain cells alone – a bit like a ‘smart bomb.’ To our knowledge, this is the first known example of selective mitochondrial chemotherapy, which we believe represents a powerful new approach to brain cancer.” To read more…
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Having a Purpose in Life May Improve Health of Aging Brain
Tuesday, April 14, 2015 9:09
Researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago have discovered a unique correlation between the psychological fulfillment of having a purpose in life and a visible increase in physical brain health later life. The study, published in the journal Stroke, follows 453 participants from their mid-eighties until death, including an attempt to quantify their perceived purpose in life with a scoring system. Upon autopsy, it was discovered that those with higher scores of purpose in life were 44-percent less likely to have macroscopic infarcts, hazardous brain growths known to increase chances of stroke. “Mental health, in particular positive psychological factors such as having a purpose in life, are emerging as very potent determinants of health outcomes,” said the author of the study. “Clinicians need to be aware of patients’ mental state and encourage behaviors that will increase purpose and other positive emotional states.” Future research will attempt to confirm these findings, and refine the scoring and tracking process in order to determine if optimistic psychology at certain ages leads to ideal results. To learn more about…
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Direct Link Between Insulin Resistance and Behavioral Disorders Found
Monday, April 13, 2015 9:00
In a study recently published in the journal PNAS, researchers from the Joslin Diabetes Center discovered one potential explanation for reasons why people with diabetes are more prone to anxiety and depression compared to those with other chronic diseases that require similar levels of management. By genetically modifying mice to make their brains resistant to insulin, scientists first found that the animals exhibited behaviors that suggested anxiety and depression, and then pinpointed a mechanism that lowers levels of a key neurotransmitter, dopamine, in areas of the brain associated with those conditions. “This is one of the first studies that directly shows that insulin resistance in the brain actually can produce a behavioral change,” said the senior author of the study. Further examining the brains of the mice, scientists also found altered metabolism in mitochondria, which produce energy for cells. Among the changes, the mitochondria increased production of two enzymes that degrade dopamine. Although the mice were releasing a normal amount of dopamine, chance in the mitochondria meant that they metabolized the dopamine more quickly. “We…
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Method for Mapping Neuron Clusters Developed
Friday, April 10, 2015 9:00
A team of scientists from NYU Center for Neural Science recently developed a method for identifying clusters of neurons that work in conjunction with one another in order to guide their behavior. The findings from the study, published in the journal Neuron, address a long-standing mystery about the organization of the prefrontal cortex (PFC)—considered one of the most recently evolved parts of the brain that underlies complex cognitive functions. “We have established a method to find functional groupings of neurons based on co-fluctuation of their responses,” said one of the study’s authors. “In doing so, we show that PFC neurons are organized into spatially contiguous maps, much like their counterparts in sensory cortices. The widely accepted notion that orderly spatial maps are restricted to sensory cortices, therefore, needs revision.” The research focused on the “parcellation” of PFC neurons — how these cells are grouped together to perform specific functions. The research team found that the discovered subnetworks in the prefrontal cortex are linked to decision-making behavior, but seem to have distinct roles — one subnetwork…
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Development of Personalized Cellular Therapy for Brain Cancer
Thursday, April 9, 2015 15:43
According to a recent study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, a team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research found that immune cells engineered to seek out and attack a type of deadly brain cancer were found to be both safe and effective at controlling tumor growth in mice that were treated with these modified cells. The new preclinical study details the design and use of T cells engineered to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that targets a mutation in the epidermal growth factor receptor protein called EGFRvIII, which is found on about 30 percent of glioblastoma patients’ tumor cells. Patients whose tumors express the EGFRvIII mutation tend to have more aggressive glioblastomas. Their tumors are less likely to respond favorably to standard therapies and more likely to recur following those treatments. “Patients with this type of brain cancer have a very poor prognosis. Many survive less than 18 months following their diagnosis,” said a lead author of the…
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