AANS Neursurgeon
Findings recently published in the journal Neuron may help explain why drug treatments for addiction and depression don’t work for some patients. The results of the study suggest that the treatments for both may simultaneously stimulate reward and aversion responses in the brain, resulting in a net effect of zero for some patients. “We studied the neurons that cause...
Research presented at the 14th International Conference on Endothelin: Physiology, Pathophysiology and Therapeutics discussed a chemical that binds to endothelin B receptors used to treat Alzheimer’s disease in rats, which may be able to halt the disease from progressing. Using endothelin B receptors via intravenous injection of IRL-1620 (a chemical that binds to endothelin B receptors) to attempt to...
In a study recently published in The Journal of Neuroscience, a team of Johns Hopkins University scientists experimented with joysticks that measured force in order to study the brain’s cost/benefit analysis in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Their experiment used a small group of 20 patients with PD and demonstrated that stimulation of the cortex of the brain using...
A panel of world experts on aging who recently convened at Saint Louis University recommended that everyone, age 70 and older, have their memory and reasoning ability evaluated annually by a doctor or health care provider. Published in the September issue of the journal JAMDA, the recommendation for brain health comes in light of numerous studies, including those in The...
According to a recent study published in the journal Neurology, researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine may have discovered a new biomarker in the blood for episodic migraine. During the study, 52 women with episodic migraine and 36 women who did not have any headaches underwent a neurologic exam, had their body mass index measured and...
According to a new study conducted by researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, a commonly prescribed antidepressant may alter brain structures in depressed and non-depressed individuals in different ways. The study — conducted in nonhuman primates with brain structures and functions similar to those of humans — found that the antidepressant sertraline, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)...
A new study presented at the 14th International Conference on Endothelin: Physiology, Pathophysiology and Therapeutics, researchers from Johns Hopkins University identified an unexplored avenue of treatment for ALS. Endothelin (ET)-1, a small protein produced by blood vessel cells and a powerful vessel constrictor, is also produced by astrocytes, cells in the brain that studies are revealing play many roles...
The number of people worldwide living with dementia is estimated to increase from 47.5 million to 75.6 million by 2030. However, researchers from the University of Cambridge recently collected data from five large epidemiological studies that focused on the rate of dementia occurrence, and found that the incidence rate has been falling across time and generations. The five studies...
Scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles recently reported how a man paralyzed from the waist down has been able to move his legs voluntarily, with the help of a robotic exoskeleton. The “step-like” movements the man was able to take are an advance of previous efforts by the same research team that saw five men with a...
According to a study recently published in the journal Neurology, diabetes may be linked to the buildup of tangles in the brain, separate from those associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The study was based on data from the U.S. Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. It analyzed the relationship between type 2 diabetes, the loss of brain cells and their connections, the...
