Fascinating video from the Mayo Clinic on research into communicating via brain waves.
Category: Brain Injury
Weekly Round Up
A part of the human brain that’s involved in emotion gets particularly excited at the sight of animals, a new study has shown. The brain structure in question is the amygdala: that almond-shaped, sub-cortical bundle of nuclei that used to be considered the brain’s fear centre, but which is now known to be involved in many aspects of emotional learning.
Studies have shown that meditating regularly can help relieve chronic pain, but the neural mechanisms underlying the relief were unclear. Now, researchers from MIT, Harvard, and Massachusetts General Hospital have found a possible explanation.
Men and women differ in the way they anticipate an unpleasant emotional experience, which influences the effectiveness with which that experience is committed to memory according to new research.
New research has contradicted a 40-year-old theory of how the brain controls impulsive behavior
Head trauma may increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, a new study says. The results show people who have suffered from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) are 1.6 times more likely to develop schizophrenia compared with those who have not suffered such an injury.
Researchers from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and Beaumont Hospital have conducted a study which has found striking brain similarities in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
The brains of older people are not slower but rather wiser than young brains, which allows older adults to achieve an equivalent level of performance, according to research undertaken at the University Geriatrics Institute of Montreal by Dr. Oury Monchi and Dr. Ruben Martins of the University of Montreal.
A new study testing alcohol’s effects on brain activity finds that alcohol dulls the brain “signal” that warns people when they are making a mistake, ultimately reducing self control.
Researchers in the Netherlands have been able to shed more light on how combat experiences change the brains of soldiers.
And finally, new research from MIT suggests that there are parts of our brain dedicated to language and only language, a finding that marks a major advance in the search for brain regions specialized for sophisticated mental functions. And this week,new research makes the case that language is not a key part of thinking about numbers, but the key part, overriding other influences like cultural ones.
Weekly Round Up
Researchers Aim for Direct Brain Control of Prosthetic Arms Credit J. Contreras-Vidal/University of Maryland.
Engineering researchers at four U.S. universities are embarking on a four-year project to design a prosthetic arm that amputees can control directly with their brains and that will allow them to feel what they touch. The researchers have developed a prototype of a device that provides feedback to the wearer’s arm while objects are moved with a prosthetic ‘hand,’ a gripper. The prototype, which incorporates noninvasive monitoring of electrical activity and blood-oxygen levels in the brain, may be incorporated into next-generation prosthetic arms.
Millions of people with severe, treatment-resistant depression could improve their condition by adding an anti-inflammatory drug to their antidepressant medication, a leading consortium of UK researchers in biological psychiatry has reported.
A new study of the brain’s master circadian clock — known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN — reveals that a key pattern of rhythmic neural activity begins to decline by middle age.
Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that our visual perception can be contaminated by memories of what we have recently seen, impairing our ability to properly understand and act on what we are currently seeing.
And finally, a new study provides clues about the cellular mechanisms of traumatic brain injury, a signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Weekly Round-Up
Transcranial magnetic stimulation can minimize forgetfulness
Memory failure is a common occurrence yet scientists have not reached a consensus as to how it happens. However, according to a new study at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is able to minimize forgetfulness by disrupting targeted brain regions as they compete between memories.
A new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, finds changes in brain activity after only five weeks of meditation training.
In an ongoing quest to map the brain, scientists have determined how the brain works to understand others. According to a new study, the brain generates empathy in one manner for those who differ physically and in another method for those who are similar. In a paper published online by Cerebral Cortex, researcher Dr Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, suggests empathy for someone to whom you can directly relate — (for example, because they are experiencing pain in a limb that you possess) — is mostly generated by the intuitive, sensory-motor parts of the brain. However, empathy for someone to whom you cannot directly relate relies more on the rationalizing part of the brain.
The brain holds on to false facts, even after they have been retracted according to a report in Scientific American.
Psychologists have found that thought patterns used to recall the past and imagine the future are strikingly similar. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the brain at work, they have observed the same regions activated in a similar pattern whenever a person remembers an event from the past or imagines himself in a future situation. This challenges long-standing beliefs that thoughts about the future develop exclusively in the frontal lobe.
Many dementia patients being prescribed antipsychotic drugs could be better treated with simple painkillers, say researchers from Kings College, London, and Norway.
Brain damage can cause significant changes in behaviour, such as loss of cognitive skills, but also reveals much about how the nervous system deals with consciousness. New findings reported in the July 2011 issue of Cortex demonstrate how the unconscious brain continues to process information even when the conscious brain is incapacitated.
Years after a single traumatic brain injury (TBI), survivors still show changes in their brains. In a new study, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggest that Alzheimer’s disease-like neurodegeneration may be initiated or accelerated following a single traumatic brain injury, even in young adults.
Mapping the Brain
Mapping the Brain, is an exhibition of pictorial stories created by people with an acquired brain injury at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
The objective is to create a series of visual stories using pictures to create the narrative. One of the symptoms of acquired brain injury is that it affects the part of the brain that controls language. This can affect anything from speech, to difficulty with reading and interpreting verbal language.
Their finished work is on show in the Mill Theatre, Dundrum, Dublin 14, from Thursday26 May to June 30th.
Gabrielle Giffords’ neurosurgeon speaks about her surgery
G. Michael Lemole Jr., M.D., keynote speaker at Health Journalism 2011
G. Michael Lemole Jr., M.D., chief of neurosurgery at the University of Arizona Department of Surgery and University Medical Center, found himself in the media spotlight after he performed brain surgery on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after she sustained a gunshot wound to the head in Tucson on Jan. 8.
As the keynote speaker at Health Journalism 2011, he recounted the treatment of the congresswoman earlier this year and his experience working with the media:
Everyone made a big deal of what we did, but it’s what we do everyday … This is academic medicine at its best
In the operation, Lemole and Martin E. Weinand, M.D., removed part of Gifford’s skull to allow her brain to swell, as well as removing dead brain tissue and skull fragments caused by the bullet.
“We basically take part of the skull off and let the swollen brain relax,” explained Lemole. The procedure can relieve pressure on the brain but it can also worsen edema – the build-up of fluid that can cause an “outward herniation.” They also had to remove damaged parts of the brain to “save the good brain underneath.”
The procedure is informed by data gathered during surgery on soldiers injured in the Iraq war, he said. At some point, surgeons will replace the bone or use a prosthetic.
On Jan. 15, Lemole repaired Giffords’ orbital roof fracture through a skull base approach. The last surgery that Giffords received was a ventriculostomy, which measured intracranial pressure and drained fluid in the brain. He credits the use of growing use of simulation in surgical training for allowing doctors to successfully perform operations like the ventriculostomy. In addition to simulation training, Lemole said the “flawless” EMT response and the multidisciplinary nature of trauma team combined to improve Giffords’ odds.
Lemole supervised the congresswoman’s care until she was released to a Houston rehabilitation hospital on Jan. 21 and during this time, was available to the media. “We strategized with ourselves, administrators, and with the family. The family asked us to get the correct information out,” he said. Lemole said he chose his words carefully. “I don’t think I gave a rosy account,” he said, describing his careful use of the term “functional recovery” instead of terms like “full recovery” or “back to normal.”
Giffords Progress
Giffords outcome was impossible to predict at the outset of her injury. Generally, the odds of dying from a gunshot wound to the head range from 56 to 94 percent, Lemole said. If the path of the bullets goes through the geographic center of the brain, through the ventricles or through multiples lobes, the prognosis is not good. In Giffords’ case, the bullet did not cross from one side of the brain to the other, but travelled through the left side. The patient’s level of consciousness at admission is another factor – at the time, Lemole was quoted as saying that Giffords was able to follow simple commands from the doctors.
The Arizona Republic newspaper reports “that she can stand on her own and walk a little but is working to improve her gait.” The use of her right arm and leg “is limited but improving” . Longer sentences frustrate her and she speaks most often in a single word or declarative phrases. She longs to leave the rehab center, repeating “I miss Tucson” and wheeling herself to the doors at the end of the hall to peer out. When that day comes, Giffords told her nurse, she plans to “walk a mountain.”
Sources:
Weekly Round Up
Research shows that our brains understand music not only as emotional diversion, but also as a form of motion and activity.
Research shows that our brains understand music not only as emotional diversion, but also as a form of motion and activity. The same areas of the brain that activate when we swing a golf club or sign our name also engage when we hear expressive moments in music. Brain regions associated with empathy are activated, too, even for listeners who are not musicians.
And still on the theme of music and the brain, a recent study of seventy healthy adults ages sixty to eighty-three with various levels of music education starting around the age of ten showed impressive differences in brain functioning far later in life than any other research has previously shown.
A new study has suggested that sustained training in mindfulness meditation may impact distinct domains of human decision-making, enabling them to make decisions rationally.
Older bilingual adults compensate for age-related declines in brainpower by developing new strategies to process language, according to a recent study published in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition.
Emerging research suggest antidepressant medications may aid creation and survival of new brain cells after a brain injury.
New study examines brain processes behind facial recognition
Finally, here is an interesting post from Chris Mooney on the science of why we don’t believe science.
New drop-in centre for patients with neurological disorders
TV3 presenter Sinead Desmond, pictured at the launch of a patient drop-in centre by the Dublin Neurological Institute this week
TV3 presenter Sinead Desmond spoke this week of her near-fatal brain haemorrhage nearly three years ago. At the launch of Ireland’s first drop-in centre for people with neurological disorders, she spoke of her gratitude at emerging unscathed with no brain damage from the experience.
“I have been blessed with a 100pc recovery,” she said. “I met people since who had similar brain haemorrhages and suffered from brain injuries. The recovery can be tough.”
The new centre is housed within the Dublin Neurological Institute at the Mater Hospital in Eccles Street. People with neurological conditions, which include epilepsy, stroke, acquired brain injury, multiple sclerosis, dementia and motor neurone disease, can call in without having to be referred by a GP. They will be able to speak to a specialist nurse, and get free medical information and support.
National Brain Awareness Week runs until Sunday.
Stroke recovery boosted by Prozac
Stroke is the third biggest killer disease in Ireland – over 2,000 people die per year – causing more deaths than breast cancer, prostate cancer and bowel cancer combined. Up to 10,000 people will suffer a stroke in Ireland this year and one in five people will have a stroke at some time in their life.
An unexpected new finding for antidepressant drugs and a very important one.
Findings from the largest study of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and stroke report that giving stroke patients the antidepressant drug Prozac soon after the event helps their recovery from paralysis. A total of 118 French patients were involved in the study. The beneficial effects of the drug – more improvement in movement and greater independence – were seen after three months – helping patients gain independence. This finding suggests that this already licensed drug – also known as fluoxetine – could have a dual benefit in the treatment of acute ischemic stroke – that’s where blood flow and oxygen supply to the brain are impaired.
Antidepressant drugs can help neurons to grow
One theory about how antidepressants may help brains recover more quickly from stroke is that they encourage neurogenesis – the creation of new neurons – in particular in the hippocampus – a brain region implicated in emotion especially anxiety – an emotion which can wear down even the most resilient person.
The ability of antidepressant drugs to increase neuron growth and connections – brain plasticity – is a promising pathway for treatment of patients with ischemic stroke and moderate to severe motor deficit. It’s a controversial theory and so far it only appears to hold true in young mice. In middle-aged and older mice, no such neurogenesis was observed – so there may be another mechanisms operating.
One thing is for sure – it’s an important finding and I hope we’ll see more work on this.
Neuroscience research may help brain injury recovery
New research shows that the way the brain first captures and encodes a situation or event is quite different from how it processes subsequent similar events.
I was interested to read a special report from the Center for Neuro Skills which describes the latest developments into how the brain registers new memory and equally importantly, how it strengthens older memories.
It has been known for years that the so-called NMDA receptor – a lock on the skin of the nerve cell which is ‘opened’ by a special key – the neurotransmitter glutamate – is involved in new learning and memory.
However this research shows that the way the brain first captures and encodes a situation or event is quite different from how it processes subsequent similar events, and suggests a whole new NMDA-independent system involving the so-called AMPA receptor – a less powerful type of NMDA receptor – involved in strengthening older memories.
Why is this so important?
Well, this new system is known to be critically involved in Alzheimer’s disease and other kinds of brain deficit memory impairment including stroke and head injury.
In fact, you may be interested to know that several drug companies have developed drugs that open the AMPA receptors called ampakines – a class of compounds known to enhance attention span and alertness, and facilitate learning and memory.
Unlike earlier stimulants such as caffeine, methylphenidate (Ritalin), and the amphetamines, ampakines do not seem to have unpleasant, long-lasting side effects such as sleeplessness.
These new memory enhancing drugs will be coming to a pharmacy near you within the next few years!
Don’t forget!
inside-the-brain.com 