BrainBlog

From The Guardian : How ice cream tickles your brain David Adam, science correspondent Friday, April 29, 2005 The Guardian Eating ice cream really does make you happy. Scientists have found that a spoonful of the cold stuff lights up the same pleasure centre in the brain as winning money or listening to your favourite music. Neuroscientists at the Institute of Psychiatry in London scanned the brains of people eating vanilla ice cream. They found an immediate effect on parts of the brain known to activate when people enjoy themselves; these include the orbitofrontal cortex, the "processing" area at the front of the brain. [ ... Read the full article ... ]

Here are references to some recent papers covering important topics in aphasia: Otsuki M, Soma Y, Yoshimura N, Miyashita K, Nagatsuka K, Naritomi H. How to improve repetition ability in patients with Wernicke's aphasia: The effect of a disguised task. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. 2005 May; 76(5): 733-735. Grossman M, Moore P. A longitudinal study of sentence comprehension difficulty in primary progressive aphasia. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. 2005 May; 76(5): 644-649. Crosson B, Moore AB, Gopinath K, White KD, Wierenga CE, Gaiefsky ME, Fabrizio KS, Peck KK, Soltysik D, Milsted C, Briggs RW, Conway TW, Gonzalez Rothi LJ. Role of the right and left hemispheres in recovery of function during treatment of intention in aphasia. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2005 Mar; 17(3): 392-406. Bakheit A. Drug treatment of poststroke aphasia. Expert Rev Neurother. 2004 Mar; 4(2): 211-217. Grossman M, Ash S. Primary progressive aphasia: A review....

Ikaria See my earlier entry .

Dana Samson, Ian A. Apperly, Umalini Kathirgamanathan and Glyn W. Humphreys. Seeing it my way: A case of a selective deficit in inhibiting self-perspective. Brain 2005 128(5):1102-1111; doi:10.1093/brain/awh464 University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK Correspondence to: Dana Samson, Behavioural Brain Sciences Centre, School of Psychology—Hills Building, University of Birmingham , Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK Little is known about the functional and neural architecture of social reasoning, one major obstacle being that we crucially lack the relevant tools to test potentially different social reasoning components. In the case of belief reasoning, previous studies have tried to separate the processes involved in belief reasoning per se from those involved in the processing of the high incidental demands such as the working memory demands of typical belief tasks. In this study, we developed new belief tasks in order to disentangle, for the first time, two perspective taking co...

The current issue of the journal Human Brain Mapping is a special-topic issue: Special Issue: Meta-Analysis in Functional Brain Mapping . Issue Edited by Peter T. Fox, Angela R. Laird, and Jack L. Lancaster. Human Brain Mapping , Volume 25, Issue 1 (May 2005). Here is the Table of Contents .

Technique Shows Promise Against Alzheimer's By Rick Weiss The Washington Post Monday, April 25, 2005; Page A02 Injections of genetically altered cells into the brain appear to nourish ailing neurons and may slow the cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer's disease, scientists reported yesterday in a preliminary study. The experimental approach, pursued by researchers at the University of California at San Diego, aims to rejuvenate brain cells by providing a steady supply of a nerve-nurturing hormone secreted by the injected cells. In studies involving a half-dozen Alzheimer's patients, most showed evidence of increased nerve growth and activity in the region of the brain most affected by the degenerative disease. Psychological test scores suggested the treatment also tempered the slow slide into dementia that is characteristic of Alzheimer's. "If these effects are borne out in larger, controlled trials, this could be a significant advance over existing the...

Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought By NICHOLAS WADE The New York Times Published: April 25, 2005 By peering not into the eyes but into the brain, an improved scanning technique has enabled scientists to figure out what people are looking at - even, in some cases, when they are not aware of what they have seen. The advance, reported today, shows that the scanners may be better able than previously supposed to probe the border between conscious and unconscious thought and even, in certain circumstances, to read people's state of mind. The scanning technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, is a more powerful version of a technique widely used in hospitals. It can show which regions of the brain are actively performing some task, but until now has lacked the resolution to track specific groups of neurons, as the functional units of the brain are called. The improvement lies not in the scanners themselves but in a new analytic technique develope...

Some Seniors Turning to Brain Screening Sat Apr 23, 8:11 PM ET Health - AP By JAMIE STENGLE, Associated Press Writer DALLAS - Bill Crist was angry and upset when his doctor diagnosed him with dementia. But the 64-year-old retired pharmacist felt a little better after going to the Center for BrainHealth for an evaluation, which showed his language skills and memory were still quite strong. Crist suffers from a neurodegenerative disorder that is associated with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. He said the follow-up test helped show him which brain functions "look normal." Such exams are becoming increasingly popular as aging Americans try to differentiate between normal aging problems and the effects of neurological conditions. [ ... Read the full article at Yahoo! ... ]

The Hutch to set up biotech firm Mice-hibernation scientist to help form Ikaria Inc. By BRAD WONG Seattle Post-Intelligencer Saturday, April 23, 2005 Seattle cell biologist Mark Roth and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are teaming up to form Ikaria Inc., a new biotechnology company that seeks to use Roth's discovery of inducing hibernation in mice to help humans with organ transplants, trauma and cancer care. Word of the new company follows yesterday's publication of Roth's groundbreaking study in the edition of Science . The company does not yet have a chief executive, said Spencer Lemons, a Hutch technology transfer executive who is overseeing the discovery that was done at the Seattle research institute. Roth, a Hutch researcher and the study's lead investigator, discovered that oxygen deprivation in mice led to a reversible state of hibernation. For doctors who need to stop bodily functions, this discovery gives hope that the same process could be done...

It has always struck me as odd that people criticize television watching as mindless entertainment. Hardly mindless. Attentional and memory demands, abstraction, requirements imposed by presentation of diverse vantage points, fast pacing, and so on, all point to fairly active neurocognition. Indeed, in some of my rehabilitation patients, I often assign choosing and watching a favorite TV show as an adjunctive and supportive "at home" task. Steven Johnson provides an interesting perspective in tomorrow's New York Times Sunday Magazine, in an essay adapted from his new book, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. Watching TV Makes You Smarter By STEVEN JOHNSON The New York Times Published: April 24, 2005 [snip] For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, s...

This week's 21 April 2005 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine includes a case vignette examining rehabilitation after stroke: Bruce H. Dobkin. Rehabilitation after stroke . The New England Journal of Medicine 2005; 352: 1677-1684.

This narrative by a writer for The Miami Herald includes a good description of the resolution of her post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) (also called post-traumatic confusional state) in the recovery from the head injury she sustained. Recovering life, self after coma BY ELISA TURNER The Miami Herald 18 April 2005 [ ... Read the full article ... ] [snip] Elisa Turner, The Herald's art critic, was in a severe car accident in August. The accident left her in a coma. Here is her story on finding her way back. It was the water's spray that nudged me back, its warmth on my skin tugging me from the stupor that had robbed me of sensation, of my self, of everything. Though still only half awake, I realized I was sitting on a chair in a shower and that my close friend Iliana Garcia was washing my hair. But the bathroom tile, a drab beige I never would have chosen, did not make sense. Where was I? Why was Iliana washing my hair? I will never forget the weirdness of waking up this way. Then my...

From today's Boston Globe FDA requests anticonvulsants be reexamined By Liz Kowalczyk The Boston Globe April 20, 2005 The Food and Drug Administration has asked the makers of epilepsy drugs, which are the fifth best-selling group of medications and are taken by millions of Americans, to reexamine their data to determine if the drugs increase patients' risk of suicide. The agency has requested an analysis similar to the one it commissioned to evaluate whether antidepressants pose a similar risk to children and teenagers. That sweeping reexamination of clinical trial data found that antidepressants can increase suicidal thoughts and behavior in young people, and last year the FDA required manufacturers to include a stronger, more prominent warning, known as a ''black box," on the drugs' labels. The agency, which has been the target of growing criticism from members of Congress over how it monitors drug safety, is under pressure to more carefully scrutinize antic...

Today's Washington Post has a full feature story from the annals of medical history: Establishing Proof Some Fifty Years Ago a Baby-Blinding Epidemic Confounded Experts -- Until a Pioneering Study Conclusively Tied Cause and Effect, and Enshrined Clinical Trials in Medical Practice By David Brown The Washington Post Tuesday, April 19, 2005; Page HE01 [ ... Read the full article ... ] (free registration required) [snip] The story of oxygen and blindness is a distant mirror of these therapeutic surprises. But it is much more as well. Of all the elements on the periodic table, oxygen is the one that seems most to symbolize life and health itself. Could extra oxygen be dangerous to tiny babies struggling to survive? It seemed inconceivable! But it was true. Two doctors proved it more than a half-century ago in a clinical experiment run in the wards of a hospital in Washington. The medical world didn't believe them, at least not enough to change routine practice. So a second, bi...

An International Symposium on "Epileptic Syndromes in Infancy and Early Childhood—Evidence-based Taxonomy and Its Implications in the ILAE Classification," will be held at Tokyo Women’s Medical University Campus, Tokyo, Japan. The meeting will take place from the 29th of April through the 1st of May, 2005. For further information, visit the following website: Infantile Seizure Society .

Study Cautions Runners to Limit Their Water Intake The New York Times By GINA KOLATA Published: April 14, 2005 After years of telling athletes to drink as much liquid as possible to avoid dehydration, some doctors are now saying that drinking too much during intense exercise poses a far greater health risk. An increasing number of athletes - marathon runners, triathletes and even hikers in the Grand Canyon - are severely diluting their blood by drinking too much water or too many sports drinks, with some falling gravely ill and even dying, the doctors say. New research on runners in the Boston Marathon, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine , confirms the problem and shows how serious it is. The research involved 488 runners in the 2002 marathon. The runners gave blood samples before and after the race. While most were fine, 13 percent of them - or 62 - drank so much that they had hyponatremia, or abnormally low blood sodium levels. Three had levels so low that they w...

The New England Journal of Medicine has made available on its website prepublication versions of the results of a large study relevant to aging, neuropsychological changes in aging, and the onset of dementia. It has also made available in the same format an editorial on this research study. The full-text versions of both articles can be found at: Original Article and at Editorial . The editorial, by Blacker, concludes by bringing emphasis to three primary findings in the study: [1] Symptoms of memory loss in older persons need to be taken with seriousness, as they may herald the onset of Alzheimer disease. [2] Donepezil may have some benefit, but this benefit is "quite limited and apparently transient." [3] Vitamin E has no impact. As a neuropsychologist, I can say that the clearest way to examine symptoms of memory problems is through a thorough neuropsychology examination. Vitamin E and Donepezil for the Treatment of Mild Cognitive Impairment. Ronald C. Petersen, Ph.D., ...

The 57th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) is being held at this time in Miami Beach, FL. Information about the conference can be found at the conference webpage .

B. Stankoff, MD, PhD, E. Waubant, MD, PhD, C. Confavreux, MD, G. Edan, MD, M. Debouverie, MD, L. Rumbach, MD, T. Moreau, MD, PhD, J. Pelletier, MD, PhD, C. Lubetzki, MD, PhD, M. Clanet, MD, PhD and French Modafinil Study Group. Modafinil for fatigue in MS: A randomized placebo-controlled double-blind study. Neurology 2005; 64: 1139-1143. From the Fédération de Neurologie (Drs. Stankoff and Lubetzki), Centre d’Investigation Clinique (Drs. Stankoff and Waubant), Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, AP-HP, Paris, France; Services de Neurologie, CHU de Lyon (Dr. Confavreux), Rennes (Dr. Edan), Nancy (Dr. Debouverie), Besançon (Dr. Rumbach), Dijon (Dr. Moreau), and Marseille (Dr. Pelletier); Fédération de Neurologie (Dr. Clanet), CHU de Toulouse, France; and UCSF MS Center (Dr. Waubant), San Francisco, CA. Objective: To assess whether modafinil, a wakefulness-promoting agent, is useful for fatigue in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Methods: Patients with MS with stable disability...

Neuroscientific and basic neuropsychological research about changes in the brain that occur as a result of learning are topical areas of novel technologies and rapid developments. The new April 2005 issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience includes a free download of the full text of a review article about these developments: Segal, M. (2005). Dendritic spines and long-term plasticity. Nature Reviews Neuroscience , 6, 277-284. [doi:10.1038/nrn1649] Department of Neurobiology, The Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, 76100 Israel. [ ... Read the full article ... ] Abstract A recent flurry of time-lapse imaging studies of live neurons have tried to address the century-old question: what morphological changes in dendritic spines can be related to long-term memory? Changes that have been proposed to relate to memory include the formation of new spines, the enlargement of spine heads and the pruning of spines. These observations also relate to a more general question of how stable dendritic spine...

Malcolm Gladwell was featured on this morning's CBS show Sunday Morning and was interviewed on the CBC's weekly book show Hot Type (airing at various times depending upon location).

The Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) opens its annual meeting tomorrow in New York City. Information can be found at the conference homepage .

The Houston Press , which is an alternative news weekly in Houston, has a feature article this week about Cyberonics and its epilepsy device and its exploration of applications in mood disorders: Exposed Nerve Cyberonics has implanted its pacemaker in thousands of epileptics. It wants to expand to the depression market. Still needed: an accounting of those who died or were injured after receiving its implant. BY CRAIG MALISOW The Houston Press 7-13 April 2005 [ ... Read the full article ... ]

From tomorrow's Times, a feature article about the different states of unconsciousness and the different etiologies that may cause them to occur: Inside the Injured Brain, Many Kinds of Awareness The New York Times By BENEDICT CAREY Published: April 5, 2005 Read the article (free registration required) ~ Here is the abstract of one of the research studies reported in the article: Whyte J, Katz D, Long D, DiPasquale MC, Polansky M, Kalmar K, Giacino J, Childs N, Mercer W, Novak P, Maurer P, Eifert B. Predictors of outcome in prolonged posttraumatic disorders of consciousness and assessment of medication effects: A multicenter study. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. 2005 Mar; 86(3): 453-462. Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute/Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, Philadelphia, PA, USA. OBJECTIVES: To develop predictive models of recovery from the vegetative state (VS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to gather prelimina...

From sfgate.com : Calisthenics for aging brains S.F. firm develops software to improve mental agility The San Francisco Chronicle Monday, April 4, 2005 Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer [snip] ... Posit Science says its brain-training program takes a more rigorous approach, backed by scientific research. Posit co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Michael Merzenich, a professor of neuroscience at UCSF, has spent more than 30 years researching brain plasticity. "The brain is just as deserving of a workout as the body," he said in a presentation to a national conference on aging last month. "The brain needs progressively challenging learning that is intensive, effortful and repetitive. " That premise underlies Posit's approach to cognitive calisthenics. Posit scientists created exercises to stimulate specific brain functions. Then its video game designers turned them into computer games, complete with a couple of animated coaches to give tips and rew...

From The Globe and Mail : Award recognizes Canadian memory research Cognitive neuroscientists Brenda Milner of McGill University in Montreal and Endel Tulving of the University of Toronto are recipients of the 2005 Gairdner Awards By JORDAN PRESS Saturday, April 2, 2005 Updated at 6:09 AM EST From Saturday's Globe and Mail Two Canadian psychologists have achieved additional international recognition for their groundbreaking work on how people remember and recall memories.Cognitive neuroscientists Brenda Milner of McGill University in Montreal and Endel Tulving of the University of Toronto are recipients of the 2005 Gairdner Awards. Of the 273 Gairdner winners, 64 have subsequently won the Nobel Prize. "It is very surprising to me that I was granted this award," Dr. Tulving said yesterday. "The Gairdners are medical awards, and I'm not a medical person . . . I'm a cognitive psychologist." The 77-year-old researcher has been studying memory since the 1970...