BrainBlog

The 90th scientific conference of the Radiological Society of North America is meeting at this time, through the 3rd of December, in Chicago. Details of the meeting can be found on the Society's webpage for the conference.

Can brain-imaging technologies show whether we are being truthful or not? A current study, reported by Reuters (as found on the Houston Chronicle website), takes a look: Brain scans can tell who's lying, who's not Reuters News Service Nov. 29, 2004, 1:50PM [snip] "There may be unique areas in the brain involved in deception that can be measured with fMRI," said Dr. Scott Faro, director of the Functional Brain Imaging Center at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. "There may be unique areas in the brain involved in truth-telling," Faro added at a news conference. Faro and colleagues tested 10 volunteers. Six of them were asked to shoot a toy gun and then lie and say they didn't do it. Three others who watched told the truth about what happened. One volunteer dropped out of the study. [snip] There were clear differences between the liars and the truth-tellers, Faro's team told a meeting in Chicago of th...

The Massachusetts Neuropsychological Society is presenting a talk by Robert Stickgold, M.D. entitled "Sleep, Memory, and Dreams: A Neurocognitive Approach" on the 7th of December 2004 at 7:30 p.m. in the 8th Floor Conference Room of the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. Information about registration and fees can be found on the Society's website .

On the topic of sports-related concussion, an article in today's New York Times on soccer headgear: Soccer Headgear: Does It Do Any Good? By JERE LONGMAN The New York Times 27 November 2004 Read the article . (free registration required)

Today's New York Times includes a front-page article about the culture of clinical-trials research: what happens to participant subjects when an experimental drug is pulled from testing and, among other issues, how teasing apart placebo-based from drug-based improvements when a drug is pulled from study is impacted when participants swear by its effectiveness in their own experience? Many See Hope in Parkinson's Drug Pulled From Testing By ANDREW POLLACK The New York Times 26 November 2004 With his condition deteriorating from Parkinson's disease last year, Steve Kaufman gave up making improvements to his home in Algonquin, Ill. "I couldn't even hold a nail stable," he recalled. Earlier this year, after taking an experimental drug in a clinical trial, Mr. Kaufman built new kitchen cabinets and an outdoor deck. He was so steady he could walk across a narrow piece of lumber like an Olympic gymnast on the balance beam. The drug, however, is n...

Alves G, Wentzel-Larsen T, Larsen JP. Is fatigue an independent and persistent symptom in patients with Parkinson disease? Neurology. 2004 Nov 23; 63(10): 1908-11. Department of Neurology, Rogaland Central Hospital, Postboks 8100, N-4068 Stavanger, Norway. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate if mental fatigue is a symptom that appears independently from other clinical features in patients with Parkinson disease (PD), and to study if fatigue is persistent over time in these patients. METHODS: In 1993, 233 patients with PD were included in a community-based study of fatigue and followed prospectively over 8 years. Fatigue was measured by a combination of a seven-point scale and parts of the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) at baseline and after 4 and 8 years. In addition, the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) was used to evaluate fatigue in 2001. Population-averaged logistic regression models for correlated data were performed to study the relationship between fatigue and various demographic and c...

From the FDA: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE P04-107 November 23, 2004 Full press release Media Inquiries: 301-827-6242 Consumer Inquiries: 888-INFO-FDA First Monoclonal Antibody Treatment For Multiple Sclerosis Approved FDA today licensed a new biologic approach to treat patients with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (MS) to reduce the frequency of symptom flare-ups or exacerbations of the disease. MS is a chronic, often disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord. Natalizumab, the new product, is a monoclonal antibody bioengineered from part of a mouse antibody to closely resemble a human antibody. It is being marketed under the tradename Tysabri. The product is given intravenously once a month in a physician's office. [ ... continues ... ]

From today's New York Times : New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim Damaged Senses By SANDRA BLAKESLEE The New York Times 23 November 2004 Full article (free registration required) [snippet] But the technology for swapping sensory information is largely the effort of Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a neuroscientist in the University of Wisconsin Medical School's orthopedics and rehabilitation department. More than 30 years ago, Dr. Bach-y-Rita developed the first sensory substitution device, routing visual images, via a head-mounted camera, to electrodes taped to the skin on people's backs. The subjects, he found, could "see" large objects and flickering candles with their backs. The tongue, sensitive and easy to reach, turned out to be an even better place to deliver substitute senses, Dr. Bach-y-Rita said. Until recently sensory substitution was confined to the laboratory. But electronic miniaturization and more powerful computer algorithms are making the...

From the CBC : Health Canada fast tracks review of multiple sclerosis drug Last Updated Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:28:46 EST TORONTO - Some Canadians with multiple sclerosis are encouraged by the early results of a study on a new kind of treatment for the disease. The drug Antegren prevents white blood cells from migrating to the central nervous system and flooding the brain, where the cells can cause damage. The study included 942 patients with relapsing-remitting MS, the earliest phase of the disease. After one year, patients on Antregen had two-thirds fewer relapses or attacks compared to patients given a placebo. "In general, you can say that this is the greatest therapeutic effects ever seen in year one for a trial of a multiple sclerosis drug," said Dr. Paul O'Connor, the lead Canadian investigator for the trial. [ ... Read the full report ... ] From the elan company website: Antegren/Tysabri (natalizumab) .

From a press release earlier today from Toronto's Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care: What happens in the brain when we remember our own past? Toronto, CANADA --Researchers are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to probe brain activity in search of the answer. According to a new fMRI study using a "diary" method to collect memories, it all depends on what we're thinking about! Researchers have known for decades that thinking about autobiographical facts is different from thinking about autobiographical episodes that happened only once. Since both kinds of thoughts can occur at the same time when people talk about their past, researchers have struggled to find an effective way to separate them. The new study, published in the current issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (16:9), is the first brain imaging study of its kind to use diary-like memories collected by volunteers. It was led by The Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest C...

This evening, the CBC news show The National reported on a study newly published in the New England Journal of Medicine . Part of the CBC website report follows, followed by a link to the study's abstract: Ultrasound may improve stroke treatment CBC Last Updated Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:48:52 EST EDMONTON - Ultrasounds break up blood clots in the brain and may help to treat strokes, new research performed at Canadian hospitals suggests. A stroke occurs when a clot blocks a blood vessel and cuts off circulation. Doctors give a drug called TPA by intravenous to dissolve blood clots lodged in the brain. Dr. Maher Saqqur of the University of Alberta and his colleagues tested an experimental combination of TPA and ultrasound to treat stroke before brain tissues are starved of a blood supply. "What we find is that patients who receive the TPA plus the ultrasound do well compared to patients who get the TPA just by themselves," said Saqqur. The study looked a...

Google has announced and is online (beta version) with an academic search engine called "Google Scholar" - which "enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web." http://scholar.google.com About Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html Google Scholar FAQs http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html#faq

In the excellent Blue Stater fictional world of the administration of President Jed Bartlet on NBC’s The West Wing, a brief reference to brain-behavior functions played a minor plotline in this evening’s episode as the former Chief of Staff Leo McGarry reminds the new Chief of Staff C.J. Cregg to get the President to play chess with her at least once a week. This advisement is left as is until the end of the episode, when Leo reveals that this was his subtle way to attempt to discern whether the President’s “executive functions” were showing some degree of impairment. (For those new to the show, the President was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis prior to his first administration but did not reveal it publically until the time before his run for re-election several years ago). “Executive functions” are a specific set of higher order brain functions that have been the subject of much neuroscientific interest for many years now. There are many good references that an interested pers...

Starkstein SE, Garau ML, Cao A. Prevalence and clinical correlates of disinhibition in dementia. Cogn Behav Neurol. 2004 Sep; 17(3): 139-47. School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, University of Western Australia, and Fremantle Hospital, Fremantle, Australia. OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: The phenomenology, main clinical correlates, and long-term evolution of disinhibition in dementia are not well known. To examine this issue, we studied a consecutive series of 272 patients with probable Alzheimer disease using a comprehensive psychiatric and neuropsychological evaluation that included the Disinhibition Scale. A subset of patients was reexamined with the same instruments between 1 and 4 years after the initial evaluation. RESULTS: A factor analysis of the Disinhibition Scale demonstrated 4 factors: (1) abnormal motor behavior, (2) hypomania, (3) loss of insight and egocentrism, and (4) poor self-care. Disinhibition was significantly associated with major and dysthymic depres...

Radanovic M, Mansur LL, Scaff M. Normative data for the Brazilian population in the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination: Influence of schooling. Braz J Med Biol Res. 2004 Nov;v37(11): 1731-8. Epub 2004 Oct 26. In Neurolinguistics, the use of diagnostic tests developed in other countries can create difficulties in the interpretation of results due to cultural, demographic and linguistic differences. In a country such as Brazil, with great social contrasts, schooling exerts a powerful influence on the abilities of normal individuals. The objective of the present study was to identify the influence of schooling on the performance of normal Brazilian individuals in the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE), in order to obtain reference values for the Brazilian population. We studied 107 normal subjects ranging in age from 15 to 84 years (mean +/- SD = 47.2 +/- 17.6 years), with educational level ranging from 1 to 24 years (9.9 +/- 4.8 years). Subjects were compared for scores...

Nature Reviews Neuroscience offers the full text ( HTML and .pdf ) of this interesting overview to language development in its November issue: Patricia K. Kuhl. Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code . Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2004. 5: 831-843. Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. Infants learn language with remarkable speed, but how they do it remains a mystery. New data show that infants use computational strategies to detect the statistical and prosodic patterns in language input, and that this leads to the discovery of phonemes and words. Social interaction with another human being affects speech learning in a way that resembles communicative learning in songbirds. The brain's commitment to the statistical and prosodic patterns that are experienced early in life might help to explain the long-standing puzzle of why infants are better la...

Here are some relevant highlights from this week’s major scientific and medical weeklies: Journal of the American Medical Association 10 November 2004 The current issue includes the paper: Kristine Yaffe et al. The Metabolic Syndrome, Inflammation, and Risk of Cognitive Decline . JAMA. 2004; 292: 2237-2242. New England Journal of Medicine 11 November 2004 This week’s issue includes a book review of an edited book by Nalin Gupta, Anuradha Banerjee, and Daphne Haas-Kogan: Pediatric CNS Tumors . Lancet 13 November 2004 This week’s issue includes the research paper The United Kingdom Infantile Spasms Study comparing vigabatrin with prednisolone or tetracosactide at 14 days: A multicentre, randomised controlled trial by Andrew L Lux and colleagues. Science 12 November 2004 This week’s issue includes several news reports from the recent Society for Neuroscience annual meeting.

Atchison TB, Bradshaw M, Massman PJ. Investigation of profile difference between Alzheimer's disease patients declining at different rates: Examination of baseline neuropsychological data. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. 2004 Dec; 19(8): 1007-1015. Department of Psychology, University of Houston, USA. The rate of cognitive decline in AD has been noted to vary significantly among patients. The ability to predict the probable rate of decline early in the disease process would be of great practical importance. Attempts to analyze early cognitive deficits to find patterns associated with rapid decline have met with limited success. This paper utilized a large sample of patients with a diagnosis of probable AD evaluated longitudinally in ongoing research at the ADRC at Baylor College of Medicine and a statistical procedure of profile analysis to assess the initial data for a pattern associated with rapid decline. The findings indicated that despite initial equality of MMSE...

The 24th Annual Conference of the National Academy of Neuropsychology (NAN) will be held in Seattle, Washington from the 17th of November through the 20th. The conference will take place at the Westin Seattle. Information about the conference program and registration can be found at the NAN Conferences webpage.

The 04 November 2004 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has a useful review article about neonatal brain injury in its Medical Progress section: Donna M. Ferriero. Neonatal brain injury. New England Journal of Medicine 2004. 351(19): 1985-1995. Topics include hypoxic–ischemic encephalopathy and neonatal stroke.

From this past Wednesday's Iowa City Press-Citizen : Damasio couple wins prestigious prize By the Press-Citizen 03 November 2004 Two physicians from the University of Iowa will receive an important honor at a ceremony Nov. 15 in the Salpetrière Hospital in Paris, France. UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine faculty members Antonio Damasio, M.D., Ph.D., the M.W. Van Allen Professor and Head of the UI Department of Neurology, and Hanna Damasio, M.D., Distinguished Professor of Neurology and director of the Human Neuroanatomy and Neuroimaging Laboratory, will receive the Jean-Louis Signoret Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience. La Fondation Ipsen sponsors the prize. The international jury cited the contributions of the Damasios to the neurobiological understanding of social cognition. This marks the first time that two investigators will share the prize. Previous recipients of the prestigious honor include neuroscientists Eric Kandel of Columbia University an...

A number of news sites are providing coverage of a study published in the current issues of The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology . Here is a version of the coverage from the New York Times : New Evidence on Main Cause of Cerebral Palsy By NICHOLAS BAKALAR The New York Times Published: November 2, 2004 A new study undermines the long-held belief among obstetricians that oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia, is the main cause of cerebral palsy in premature infants. The study, published in the October issue of The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology , found that the brain injury that leads to cerebral palsy was much more commonly associated with infection than with hypoxia. The new findings, said Dr. Ernest Graham, an assistant professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins and the lead author of the study, have important implications for both research and clinical practice. "This changes our thinking," Dr. ...

From tomorrow's New York Times : Alzheimer's Steals More Than Memory By DENISE GRADY The New York Times 02 November 2004 It happened without warning, early one day last summer as they prepared to go out. Gloria Rapport's husband raised his arm to her, fist poised. "He was very close to striking me," she said. What had provoked him? "Nothing," she said. "I asked him to get in the car." Mrs. Rapport's husband, Richard, 71, has Alzheimer's disease. His forgetfulness and confusion began about nine years ago, not long after they married. More recently, emotional troubles have loomed. Anxiety came first: he suddenly feared being left alone in the house. Outbursts of anger followed. The man she had always known to be kind and gentle could in an instant turn "cunning, nasty, aggressive, menacing," she said. “The behavioral changes I've seen are absolutely frightening," she said. "I understand n...