BrainBlog

From Pharmalot blog, a good read about the Amyvid approval decision: Should FDA Have Approved Lilly Alzheimer’s Agent? Pharmalot By Ed Silverman April 9th, 2012 // 11:23 am Read the full blog post

From a press release from the NIH: Stanford researcher to speak at NIH on the role of neuroimaging in understanding pain NCCAM presents Opening Windows to the Brain: Lessons Learned in the Neuroimaging of Pain [snippet] What: Sean Mackey, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the Pain Management Division and associate professor of anesthesia and pain management at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, Calif., will be the featured speaker for the third annual Stephen E. Straus Distinguished Lecture in the Science of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Dr. Mackey’s lecture is entitled Opening Windows to the Brain: Lessons Learned in the Neuroimaging of Pain. Why: Millions of Americans suffer from pain that is chronic, severe, and not easily managed. People who suffer from chronic pain may take various prescription and non-prescription medications; these do not always provide adequate relief and may have unwanted side effects. As a result, people sometimes turn to non-pharmacological ...

Training-induced neural plasticity in golf novices Journal of Neuroscience. 2011 Aug 31; 31(35): 12444-8. Authors: Bezzola L, Mérillat S, Gaser C, Jäncke L Abstract Previous neuroimaging studies in the field of motor learning have shown that learning a new skill induces specific changes of neural gray and white matter in human brain areas necessary to control the practiced task. Former longitudinal studies investigating motor skill learning have used strict training protocols with little ecological validity rather than physical leisure activities, although there are several retrospective and cross-sectional studies suggesting neuroprotective effects of physical leisure activities. In the present longitudinal MRI study, we used voxel-based morphometry to investigate training-induced gray matter changes in golf novices between the age of 40 and 60 years, an age period when an active life style is assumed to counteract cognitive decline. As a main result, we demonstrate that 40 h of golf ...

FierceBiotechResearch has an article which presents a very brief overview of the current Alzheimer's disease drug pipeline: It is available at the link below: Making sense of the Alzheimer's drug pipeline FierceBiotechResearch March 15, 2011 — 7:53am ET By Howard Lovy Read the full article If this area is new to you, the article will give you the names of some candidates that you can learn about as part of your introduction. There are many other overview articles and public resources available to you concerning clinical-trials research. You might wish, for example, to cross reference the names cited here with the ClinicalTrials.gov database. If you are a Brain Awareness Week visitor, you can visit the Alzheimer's Association or other national organizations in your country to learn more about Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

A fuller report from The New York Times : F.D.A. Sees Promise in Alzheimer’s Imaging Drug By GINA KOLATA The New York Times Published: January 20, 2011 "A committee voted that the agency should approve the first test that can show the characteristic plaques of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain of a living person." Read the full article

From The New York Times : F.D.A. Sees Promise in Alzheimer’s Imaging Drug By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: January 20, 2011 Filed at 5:40 p.m. EST WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal panel of medical experts said Thursday a first-of-a-kind imaging chemical designed to help screen for Alzheimer's disease could be useful pending additional study and training for physicians. The Food and Drug Administration panel of advisers voted 16-0 in favor of approval for Eli Lilly's Amyvid on the condition that the company demonstrates the images can be consistently interpreted by physicians who have received training in reading the scans. Without those requirements the panel voted 13-3 against approval for the injection in an earlier vote. The FDA is not required to follow the panel's advice, though it often does. Read the full report

From the FDA (.pdfs of briefing material is available at the link below): January 20-21, 2011: Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee Meeting Announcement Read the full announcement Agenda "On January 20, 2011, the committee will discuss new drug application (NDA) 202-008, florbetapir F 18 injection, sponsored by Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, Inc. , proposed for use in positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of β-amyloid (beta-amyloid) aggregates in the brain to help rule out Alzheimer's disease. "On January 21, 2011, the committee will discuss NDA 201-277, gadobutrol injection, sponsored by Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, proposed for use in diagnostic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in adults and children (2 years of age and older) to detect and visualize areas with disrupted blood brain barrier (BBB) and/or abnormal vascularity (abnormal blood supply and circulation) of the central nervous system. The BBB is an area consisting of specialized ...

From The New York Times : Tests Show Promise for Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s By GINA KOLATA The New York Times Published: January 18, 2011 "Researchers report major advances on two vexing questions about Alzheimer’s: How do you know if someone who is demented has it? And how can you screen the general population for risk?" Read the full article. The report includes discussion about this week's forthcoming FDA Advisory Committee discussion about Avid Radiopharmaceuticals product.

An NIH news release: NIH-Supported Study Looks for Earliest Changes in the Brain That May Lead to Alzheimer's Disease 02 June 2010 Read the news release

Inside the mind of an actor (literally) How does an actor engage with the part they are playing? Fiona Shaw undergoes a brain scan while reciting TS Eliot to help shed some light on the mystery Stuart Jeffries The Guardian Tuesday 24 November 2009 [snip] The experiment is the latest in which Scott has explored the different ways our brains control our voices. "In the past, I've worked with impressionists to see what happens in their brains when they impersonate people's voices. The literature in psychology on faces is huge, but there's a lot less work on voices – partly because when we talk about speech, we go straight to focusing on language itself. "Fiona is going to perform some lines from a text she's familiar with [Shaw performed Eliot's epic poem 13 years ago in a production directed by Deborah Warner, and will reprise that performance at Wilton's music hall in London next month]. She's conveying different people by the way they speak, and we...

The Cardiff Neuroscience Centre Webpage Read about neuroscience research activities in and around Cardiff and their collaboration with Bristol via this virtual centre.

"Inside Bill Moorier's Head" website link

2nd Conference on Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD) From the conference website: "Dear Colleague, "It is a great pleasure for us to invite you to attend the 2nd conference Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD), which will take place in Las Vegas on October 29-30, 2009. "This conference is co-organized by the Montpellier and Toulouse European Alzheimer’s Disease Consortium (EADC) Centers and the Cleveland Clinic : Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. "The aims of the meeting are to bring together the current leaders in clinical trials in Alzheimer’s Disease to discuss new results, drugs in development, and future methodological issues (disease modifying, outcomes, biomarkers, health economics)." Full details available at the conference website: http://www.ctad.fr/01-presentation/presentation.asp

Neuropsychologist Stephen Rao is in the news, with a recent publication in the journal Neurology looking at fMRI of individuals who had frisk factors for Alzheimer's disease and normal contols as they identify famous faces. Here is a report from Time magazine's website: What Britney Spears Can Reveal About Alzheimer's By ALICE PARK Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2009 Read article

Following up on a posting earlier this week: From a General Electrics press release 11 August 2009 FDA ADVISORY COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS DaTSCAN™ (Ioflupane I 123 Injection) PRINCETON, NJ--GE Healthcare announced today that the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs advisory committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has voted to recommend DaTSCAN (Ioflupane I 123 Injection) to the FDA. The panel determined DaTSCAN has a favorable risk to benefit profile, voting 11 to two with one abstention. The proposed indication for DaTSCAN is for the visualization of the dopamine transporter (DaT) distribution within the striata by single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging in patients presenting with symptoms or signs suggestive of dopaminergic neurodegeneration. In May 2009, the FDA accepted the New Drug Application and granted DaTSCAN priority review, a designation identified for areas of unmet medical need. If approved, DaTSCAN will be the first radiopharmaceut...

The Wall Street Journal's HealthBlog discusses this radiopharmaceutical and the FDA meeting to be held tomorrow about it [ read post here ]

Edinburgh Neuroscience : "The mission of Edinburgh Neuroscience is to integrate basic and clinical research in order to drive the fundamental genetic, cellular, organ, systems and computational neuroscience underpinning pathogenesis into mechanistic understanding, future diagnostics and therapeutics of important diseases of the nervous system. We serve the interests of all members of the neuroscience community, encompassing and supported by the Research Centres and Institutes of the University of Edinburgh and its affiliates. Edinburgh Neuroscience is hosted by the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at The University of Edinburgh and currently consists of approximately 470 staff, 160 PhD students and 40 MSc students, working in 137 research laboratories." - from the website

Usui N, Haji T, Maruyama M, Katsuyama N, Uchida S, Hozawa A, Omori K, Tsuji I, Kawashima R, & Taira M. (2009). Cortical areas related to performance of WAIS Digit Symbol Test: a functional imaging study. Neurosci Lett. Jul 21. Many neuropsychological studies have shown that the Digit Symbol Test (DST) of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) is useful for screening for dysfunctions of the brain. However, it remains unclear which brain areas are actually involved in the performance of DST and what brain functions are used for executing this test. In this study, we examined the cortical areas related to cognitive aspects of DST using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and determined executive brain functions involved in this test on the basis of fMRI results. Eleven healthy young adults (mean=21.6 years) performed a modified DST (mDST) task and its control task, which required a simple graphomotor response during fMRI data acquisition. The direct comparison of bra...

medGadget presents and links to a new fMRI report on 'mind-reading': Can Neuroscientists Read Your Mind with fMRI? Read post here

A Bloomberg News report about the state of clinical trials of those Alzheimer's disease candidates in the processes/stages in amyloid levels and amyloid deposition: read article here