Tag: medicine

This Is Your Brain On Poetry

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poetryResearchers at the University of Exeter have been bridging the gap between art and science by mapping the different ways in which the brain responds to poetry and prose. The team used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to visual how the brain activates certain regions to process various activities.

Before this study, no one had specifically examined the brain’s differing responses to poetry and prose. The results, published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, revealed activity within a “reading network” of brain regions that were activated in response to any written material.

The researchers found that when study participants read one of their favorite passages of poetry, regions of the brain associated with memory were stimulated more strongly than “reading areas.” This suggests that reading a favorite passage is like a recollection. When the team specifically compared poetry to prose, they found evidence that poetry activates brain regions associated with introspection – such as the posterior cingulate cortex and medial temporal lobes.

Weekly Neuroscience Update

UC Santa Barbara scientists turned to the simple sponge to find clues about the evolution of the complex nervous system and found that, but for a mechanism that coordinates the expression of genes that lead to the formation of neural synapses, sponges and the rest of the animal world may not be so distant after all.

Scientists have discovered a mechanism which stops the process of forgetting anxiety after a stress event. In experiments they showed that feelings of anxiety don’t subside if too little dynorphin is released into the brain. The results can help open up new paths in the treatment of trauma patients. The study has been published in the current edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.

The biological role of a gene variant implicated in multiple sclerosis (MS) has been determined by researchers at Oxford University. The finding explains why MS patients do badly on a set of drugs used successfully in other autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease – something that has been a puzzle for over 10 years.

A clinical trial of an Alzheimer’s disease treatment developed at MIT has found that the nutrient cocktail can improve memory in patients with early Alzheimer’s. The results confirm and expand the findings of an earlier trial of the nutritional supplement, which is designed to promote new connections between brain cells.

An international consortium, has taken cells from Huntington’s Disease patients and generated human brain cells that develop aspects of the disease in the laboratory. The cells and the new technology will speed up research into understanding the disease and also accelerate drug discovery programs aimed at treating this terminal, genetic disorder. 

Stem cells that come from a specific part of the developing brain help fuel the growth of brain tumors caused by an inherited condition, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report.

Findings from the first study directly examining gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentrations in the brains of children with ADHD were published last week in the Archives of General Psychiatry. In this new article researchers report finding significantly lower concentrations of GABA in the cerebral cortexes of children diagnosed with ADHD, compared with typically developing children. GABA is the brain’s main inhibitory neurotransmitter. The differences were detected in the region of the brain that controls voluntary movement.

People who are born deaf process the sense of touch differently than people who are born with normal hearing, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health. The finding reveals how the early loss of a sense— in this case hearing—affects brain development. It adds to a growing list of discoveries that confirm the impact of experiences and outside influences in molding the developing brain. The study is published in the July 11 online issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

Neuronal abnormalities in the brains of children with obstructive sleep apnea are reversible with treatment, a prospective study has shown.

Although many areas of the human brain are devoted to social tasks like detecting another person nearby, a new study has found that one small region carries information only for decisions during social interactions. Specifically, the area is active when we encounter a worthy opponent and decide whether to deceive them. A brain imaging study conducted by researchers at the Duke Center for Interdisciplinary Decision Science (D-CIDES) put human subjects through a functional MRI brain scan while playing a simplified game of poker against a computer and human opponents. Using computer algorithms to sort out what amount of information each area of the brain was processing, the team found only one brain region — the temporal-parietal junction, or TPJ — carried information that was unique to decisions against the human opponent.

 

Neuroscience News Update

University of Georgia researchers have developed a map of the human brain that shows great promise as a new guide to the inner workings of the body’s most complex and critical organ.

Brains that maintain healthy nerve connections as we age help keep us sharp in later life, new research funded by the charity Age UK has found.

The brain reward systems of women with anorexia may work differently from those of women who are obese, a new study suggests.

Emotional stress caused by last year’s tsunami caused a part of some survivors’ brains to shrink, according to scientists in Japan who grasped a unique chance to study the neurological effects of trauma. On a quest to better understand post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the researchers compared brain scans they had taken of 42 healthy adolescents in other studies in the two years before the killer wave, with new images taken three to four months thereafter. Among those with PTSD symptoms, they found a shrinking in the orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain involved in decision-making and the regulation of emotion, said a study published in the Nature journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Easing the pain of migraine attacks

Dr Chad Beyer

Welcome to Part Three of this series on migraine attacks. Today, I am stepping into the world of guest blogging and am delighted to host Inside The Brain’s first guest blogger – Dr Chad Beyer, who explains how the race is on to discover better and safer drugs to diminish migraine pain and prevent future attacks.  

If you belong to the 1 in 4 households in theUnited States or the 11% of the world who suffer from acute migraines, you have about a 50/50 chance of being prescribed a “triptan” or a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) such as aspirin.  Unfortunately for patients, both treatment options are routinely accompanied by severe safety liabilities.  Most people are probably aware of the gastrointestinal and cardiovascular side-effects associated with NSAIDs and selective COX-2 inhibitors – if you are not, just Google Vioxx or Celebrex!

Collectively, the triptans (exemplified by sumatriptan) are not a squeaky clean class of molecules either and bring with them potential cardiovascular liabilities that make them contraindicated in roughly 20% of migraineurs who are also diagnosed with high blood pressure, angina and several other cardiovascular-related events.  This is due to the non-specific vasoconstriction induced by triptans – which is great in the middle cerebral and meningeal arteries where migraines are suspected to occur but notsomuch in other arteries within the cardiovascular, pulmonary and renal systems.

Therefore, despite the marked advances in our understanding of the complex biology of migraines (i.e., the vasoconstriction and neuropeptide (CGRP) hypotheses) and the discovery of a variety of prescription medicines used to manage the clinical symptoms (the triptans), there remain considerable unmet needs requiring a focused eye towards improving both the efficacy and safety profile of future migraine treatments.

Although commercially-available triptans only work in about 40% of migraine patients, they continue to be the market leader used to combat migraine.  My opinion is that not all migraines are created equal and if you have found a treatment strategy (e.g., a triptan) that works well for you and one that you can tolerate – then by all means, keep doing what you are doing!

However, there is clear evidence that exists to support the discovery and development of therapies designed to work by a novel mechanism to treat migraine.  We (and other companies focused on this problem) are excited about the possibility to bring to the world a novel medication that demonstrates superior safety and possibly efficacy for the millions of patients suffering from acute migraine.  To find out more about our treatment approach for migraine and our company, please visit arielpharma.com to learn more.

For additional information on the prevalence of migraine, current treatment options or to read patient testimonials, the following websites are an excellent starting point:

www.migraineresearchfoundation.org

www.headaches.org

 

Read the first two parts of this series:

The Anatomy Of A Migraine Attack (Part One)

What Happens During A Migraine Attack (Part Two)

 

 

University of Limerick medical graduates conferred

Pictured with Dr. Neasa Starr at UL Medical Graduation

Last Tuesday, 14 June, was an historic day in the life of the University of Limerick Graduate Entry Medical School  (GEMS) in which I am Foundation Head of Teaching and Research in Physiology.

Four years ago on September 10th we welcomed 32 students, from a variety of degree disciplines, to Limerick to study at Ireland’s first graduate entry medical school. Last week those students, who came from backgrounds as diverse as music, engineering, science, and education, were conferred with their Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees.

Last week’s conferring ceremony for students marks a number of firsts – the first medical school to be founded in Ireland in over 150 years, the first graduate entry medical school in Ireland, and the first to integrate problem based learning techniques into its four-year curriculum.

I join with all my colleagues at GEMS in wishing this cohort of new doctors every success in their future careers.