Newsline — Monday, February 9, 2015 9:00
Depression, Behavior Changes May Start in Alzheimer’s Even Before Memory Changes
Impaired Brain Activity Linked to Inability to Regulate Emotions in Autism
Friday, February 6, 2015 9:00
Although symptoms such as temper tantrums, irritability, self-injury, depression and anxiety are associated with autism, they are not considered core symptoms of the disorder. In a recent study, published in the Journal of Autism Developmental Disorder, researchers from the UNC School of Medicine found that improving prefrontal cortex activity could directly help autistic people regulate their emotions and improve serious symptoms associated with the disorder. The discovery shows that symptoms related to emotion regulation have a biological explanation that can be visualized using fMRI. During the study, participants viewed a series of pictures of human faces with no expression. Partway through viewing each picture, participants were asked to generate positive thoughts about the picture, or generate negative thoughts, or leave their emotional response unchanged. Researchers found that in the control group, the prefrontal cortex worked hard to modulate an emotional response, originating in the limbic system. However, the brain scans of the participants with autism were different. “The prefrontal cortex did not come online to the same extent,” said a lead author of the study….
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Brain Region Vulnerable to Aging is Larger in Those with Longevity Gene Variant
Thursday, February 5, 2015 10:52
According to researchers from the University of California San Francisco, people who carry a variant of a gene that is associated with longevity also have larger volumes in a front part of the brain involved in planning and decision making. The findings from the study, published in the journal Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, reinforces previous discoveries that middle-aged and older people who carry a single copy of the KLOTHO allele, called KL-VS, performed better on a wide range of cognitive tests. When researchers modeled KL-VS in mice, they found this strengthened the connections between neurons and enhanced learning and memory. During the study, researchers scanned the brains of 422 cognitively normal men and women, ages 53 and up, to see if the size of any brain area correlated with carrying one, two or no copies of the allele. They found that the KLOTHO gene variant predicted the size of a region called the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC), which is especially vulnerable to atrophy as people age. Deterioration in this area may be…
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Decisions on Future Childbearing in Women Diagnosed with Meningioma
Wednesday, February 4, 2015 9:45
Researchers from the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., developed a survey to identify the impact of a meningioma diagnosis on women’s views about reproductive choices. Some reports indicate that pregnancy may be a risk factor for tumor progression or recurrence. In a preliminary study, researchers surveyed women who had received a diagnosis of meningioma in order to ascertain their personal attitudes toward childbearing and what influences, such as physician recommendations, may have played a role in these attitudes. The majority (70 percent) of surveyed female meningioma survivors ages 25 to 44 claimed a strong desire to bear a child, and 27 percent of these respondents intended to have a baby in the future. The majority of respondents to the survey (52 percent) reported that their physicians advised them about potential risk factors for meningioma recurrence. Nearly half of the respondents stated that pregnancy was one of those factors. The factor that most influenced childbirth intentions among the meningioma survivors was the risk of recurrent meningioma and the need for more treatment. To read more…
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In Infants, Pain from Vaccinations Shows Up in Brain Activity
Tuesday, February 3, 2015 15:28
A study conducted by the University College London, published in the journal PAIN, depicts innovative use of brain-wave technology attempting to understand the pain reception in infants during inoculation. Using electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor brain waves, researchers studied 15 healthy and medically normal infants as they received routine vaccinations, both during one-to-two month vaccinations and those taking place one year after birth. By syncing EEG scans with videos taken of the infants during the procedure, exact facial cues and body language was examined to determine the relationship to electrical activity in the brain. Ultimately, no correlation could be found between body reactions and EEG waves, thus rendering inconclusive results. The author explained, “Cortical EEG activity…shows that the noxious stimulus is being processed in the brain, with some individual variability, but is not necessarily a direct read-out of the amount of pain perceived.” Future research hopes to use this brain wave technique to analyze the development of pain responses in infants and study how the nervous system changes throughout the growth process. To learn more about…
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Brain’s On-Off Switch for Thirst Identified
Tuesday, February 3, 2015 9:00
In a recent study published in the journal Nature, researchers from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) identified neurons in the brain responsible for triggering our sense of thirst. Researchers have long suspected that thirst is regulated by neurons in the subfornical organ (SFO), located in the hypothalamus. However, it’s been difficult to pinpoint exactly which neurons are involved. The research team at CUMC hypothesized that there are at least two types of neurons in the SFO — including ones that drive thirst and others that suppress it. To test their hypothesis, researchers utilized optogenetics, a more precise technique for controlling brain activity. With optogenetics, researchers can control specific sets of neurons in the brain after inserting light-activated molecules into them. Shining light onto these molecules turns on the neurons without affecting other types of neurons nearby. These “mind control” experiments revealed two types of neurons in the SFO that control thirst; CAMKII neurons, which turn thirst on, and VGAT neurons, which turn it off. When the researchers turned on CAMKII neurons, mice immediately began to…
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Researchers Make New Discoveries in Key Pathway for Neurological Diseases
Thursday, January 29, 2015 14:47
An intermediate step in the enzymatic process of the body’s metabolic pathway has been discovered by researchers from Georgia State University, as published in the journal Nature Communications. The study analyzed the tryptophan kynurenine pathway, which is associated with psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. This pathway produces nearly all tryptophan in the body — primary basis for serotonin — which regulates overall mood and mental stability. Using time-lapse crystallography and single-crystal spectroscopy, the reaction rate was slowed down by nearly 10,000 times to observe the process, which revealed new enzyme interactions never previously observed or theorized. The author explained, “Enzymes work by stabilizing reactive intermediates. Through this isomerization mechanism, we found a new reactive intermediate stabilized by this enzyme. So if you want to design a drug, your best bet is to try and make something that looks very similar to this so that it will bind to the enzyme. That’s a general strategy for drug design. You want to try and make drugs that look very similar to transition states. Basically, we found a new…
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Myelin Linked to Speedy Recovery of Human Visual System After Tumor Removal
Tuesday, January 27, 2015 13:30
A cutting-edge imaging method has revealed new details regarding how the brain heals itself after tumor removal; including new, dynamic information regarding how visual nerves recover. Researchers from the University of Rochester published a study in the journal Science Translational Medicine detailing the use of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to study the healing process of visual nerve fibers in patients during recovery from brain-tumor removals. The scans discovered how myelin insulates neuron connections, and protects them from water exposure, and how varying levels of myelin predicted the overall healing rate when inadequate insulation led to malfunctions and further damage. By testing for myelin levels, in-depth progress of healing could be determined and vision restoration could be predicted. “This kind of research will create novel treatments to fix broken nervous systems. Harnessing new technologies to help us understand how the brain repairs itself and restores function, and how we can accelerate that process will be one of the keys to restoring neurological function in a wide range of conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, stroke and traumatic…
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Surgery Outcomes for High-Risk Epilepsy Patients
Tuesday, January 27, 2015 10:18
Two studies presented at the American Epilepsy Society (AES) annual meeting explored the outcomes of brain surgery for children with severe epilepsy. Anti-epileptics drugs can control seizures and improve quality of life for most people with epilepsy; however, some find those treatments ineffective or intolerable. One study created a decision analysis model to compare how two treatment strategies — medical treatment alone versus brain surgery — influenced the life expectancy of pediatric patients with refractory epilepsy. Results from that study suggest brain surgery is significantly more advantageous than medical treatment alone for eligible children with refractory epilepsy. The second study examined the effectiveness of respective epilepsy surgery on seizure frequency in children with refractory epilepsy and features of Lennox Gastaut Syndrome (LGS). Follow-up visits conducted six months to 6.6 years after surgery showed that 19 patients (out of 36) were seizure free. Two years after surgery, of the patients still experiencing seizures, five patients became almost seizure free, with an average of nine per month. At the last follow-up visit, 24 patients were either seizure-free or…
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Roller Coaster Rides Trigger Stroke in Young Boy
Monday, January 26, 2015 13:14
A four-year-old boy suffered a stroke following a day of riding roller coasters at an amusement park, leading to an investigation by Loyola University Medical Center, which was published in the journal Pediatric Neurology. The previously healthy boy began exhibiting nausea and facial paralysis on an airplane the following day, eventually leading to paralysis of the left side. Upon emergency treatment, imaging scans revealed both carotid artery dissection and signs of a stroke. It was concluded that sudden movements of the roller coaster ride hyperextended the neck, dissecting the carotid artery, which led to a mobile blood clot reaching the brain, causing a stroke. “This hypermobility, combined with other kinetic and linear forces experienced during a roller coaster ride, could theoretically explain why some children, albeit rarely, sustain dissections,” explained the author. Upon being treated with low-dose aspirin to relieve the clotting, steady improvement was observed. Six months later, the boy was shown to have improved mobility with only mild weakness on his left side. The researchers noted that 15 percent of strokes occur in…
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