BrainBlog

From a National Institutes of Health (NIH) press release on the 26th: Scientists Suggest New Pathway Causing Cell Death in Dementia Scientists have discovered a link between a mutated gene and a protein found in dead brain cells of people who suffer from a form of dementia and other neurological disorders. The finding, reported in the Sep. 26, 2007, issue of the Journal of Neuroscience , demonstrates for the first time a pathological pathway that ultimately results in cell death related to frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease). The discovery could eventually play a role in the design of new drug therapies. The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Leonard Petrucelli, Ph.D., and Dennis W. Dickson, M.D, of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., led the international team of scientists in the study supported by the Mayo Clinic Foundation. The study, in ce...

From the current issue of The New Yorker : The Abyss Music and amnesia by Oliver Sacks September 24, 2007 The experience of Clive Wearing and his spouse, Deborah. [ ... Read the article ... ]

van de Sandt-Koenderman WM, Wiegers J, Wielaert SM, Duivenvoorden HJ, & Ribbers GM. A computerised communication aid in severe aphasia: An exploratory study. Disability and Rehabilitation. 2007 Apr 30;:1-9 [Epub ahead of print]. Rijndam Rehabilitation Center, Rotterdam. Purpose. To investigate the efficacy of TouchSpeak (TS) , a handheld computerised communication aid for aphasia. Method. A pre-post one-group design was used with a referred sample of 34 patients with a severe aphasia and a need for alternative and augmentative communication (AAC). The participants were trained to use TS in two self-chosen communicative situations. The ability to navigate the hierarchical vocabulary and overall communicative ability were assessed. Participants rated their communicative success with and without TS. Three years after completion of the training, participants were interviewed about their present use of TS. Results. In total, 76% used TS outside the clinic in two trained communicative ...

This weekend I crack open the files on my next book and begin work on it, which I plan to complete by the end of 2008. This will be a weekend and vacation-time effort, which is the only way I can fit it in. I've co-authored three academic books in the past and written a number of general-readership articles, but this will be my first venture into a book-length work written for a more general audience. The closest I've come to this in the past was a monograph (monograph:book as novella: novel) on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) waaaay back in 1984, so I'm looking forward to the task! The topic is on my area of expertise: the neuropsychological assessment of persons and what we can learn from these tests about the brain-behavior functioning of individuals.

Ackermann H, Mathiak K, & Riecker A. The contribution of the cerebellum to speech production and speech perception: Clinical and functional imaging data. Cerebellum. 2007; 6(3): 202-13. Department of General Neurology, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen. A classical tenet of clinical neurology proposes that cerebellar disorders may give rise to speech motor disorders (ataxic dysarthria), but spare perceptual and cognitive aspects of verbal communication. During the past two decades, however, a variety of higher-order deficits of speech production, e.g., more or less exclusive agrammatism, amnesic or transcortical motor aphasia, have been noted in patients with vascular cerebellar lesions, and transient mutism following resection of posterior fossa tumors in children may develop into similar constellations. Perfusion studies provided evidence for cerebello-cerebral diaschisis as a possible pathomechanism in these instances. Tight functional conne...

The Healthy Brain Initiative website. From the website: [snip] "The lack of cognitive health – from mild cognitive decline to dementia—can have profound implications for an individual’s health and well-being. Older adults and others experiencing cognitive decline may be unable to care for themselves or to conduct necessary activities of daily living, such as meal preparation and money management. Limitations in the ability to effectively manage medications and existing medical conditions are of particular concern when an individual is experiencing cognitive decline or dementia. If cognitive decline could be prevented or better treated, lives of many older adults could be improved. "Opportunities for maintaining cognitive health are growing as public health professionals gain a better understanding of risk factors for cognitive decline. The public health community should embrace cognitive health as a priority, invest in its promotion, and enhance our ability to move scientifi...

BrainBlog turns three years old today.

Vogels RL, Oosterman JM, van Harten B, Scheltens P, van der Flier WM, Schroeder-Tanka JM, & Weinstein HC. Profile of Cognitive Impairment in Chronic Heart Failure. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2007 Aug 28; [Epub ahead of print]. Department of Neurology, Sint Lucas-Andreas Hospital , Amsterdam, The Netherlands. OBJECTIVES: To determine the frequency and pattern of cognitive dysfunction in outpatients with chronic congestive heart failure (CHF) and to identify the corresponding demographic and clinical correlates. DESIGN: Case-control study. SETTING: Outpatient clinic in a community hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Sixty-two outpatients with CHF, 53 controls diagnosed with cardiovascular disease uncomplicated by CHF (cardiac controls), and 42 healthy controls were investigated. MEASUREMENTS: Neuropsychological assessment included tests of mental speed, executive function, memory, language, and visuospatial function. Composite z-scores for five cognitive domains and mean z-sco...

Belleville S, Chertkow H, & Gauthier S. Working memory and control of attention in persons with Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychology. 2007 Jul; 21(4): 458-469. Research CenterInstitut Universitaire de Geriatrie de Montreal, Montreal, PQ, Canada The goal of the present study was to assess 3 attentional control processes--divided attention, manipulation capacities, and inhibition--in persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Manipulation capacities were tested by comparing immediate serial recall with alphabetical-order recall of words. Divided attention was tested with the Brown-Peterson procedure, in which participants divide their attention between simple addition tasks and consonant trigrams over delays. Inhibition was tested with the Hayling procedure, in which participants complete sentences with words irrelevant to their context. Persons with AD showed severe impairment on the 3 attentional cont...

While travelling on neuropsych business over the past week, I've been totally enjoying the new collaboration between Dana Press and Dr. Floyd Bloom - an edited book of feature articles from Scientific American . The book contains 21 articles of the many that have appeared in the magazine from 1999 onward. My favorite is the last one, "The Quest for a Smart Pill," by Stephen Hall. I may be mistaken, but I believe Hall has also written on this topic for the journal, Science . It deals with memory- and other cognitive-function- enhancing drugs currently under development by a number of biotech companies and some of the ethical issues involved in this domain. Good reads on the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders and computer-brain interfaces also are included. Articles by Antonio Damasio, Eric Kandel, and Fred Gage are representative of some of the neuroscientific leaders found in the book. Science journalist Carl Zimmer is represented, as well. List price of $25.00, The Be...

From today's New York Times : Mind Over Matter, With a Machine’s Help By JASON PONTIN Published: August 26, 2007 [snip] Omneuron is one of a number of new companies that are commercializing a brain-scanning technology called real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. Using large scanners to measure blood flow to different parts of the brain, the technology makes the brain’s activity visible by revealing which of its parts are busiest when we perform different tasks. While fMRI dates back to the early 1990s, hitherto it has been used mainly by doctors in hospitals to make diagnoses. The commercialization of brain scanning is a recent development, spurred by the refinement of the technology. Omneuron , which Dr. deCharms founded in 2001 and whose research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, uses fMRI to teach people how to play with their own heads. Other entrepreneurs are working on ways to deploy fMRI as a lie detector, a tool for conducting market...

Reimer B, D'Ambrosio LA, Coughlin JF, Fried R, & Biederman J. Task-induced fatigue and collisions in adult drivers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Traffic Inj Prev. 2007 Sep; 8(3): 290-299. AgeLab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Objective. This study compares collision involvement between adult drivers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and control participants in a simulation experiment designed to enhance the effects of fatigue. Because the effects of ADHD include difficulties in maintaining attention, drivers with ADHD were hypothesized to be more susceptible to the effects of fatigue while driving. Methods. Data are drawn from a validated driving simulation study, portions of which were focused on enhancing the effects of fatigue. The simulator data are supplemented with written questionnaire data. Drivers with ADHD were compared with controls. Results. The self-report data indicated that drivers with...

The archive from a conference held at MIT in May of what sounds and looks like an exceptional event: Access here .

From today's New York Times : Sleights of Mind By GEORGE JOHNSON Published: August 21, 2007 [ ... Read the article ... ]

From the BBC's website: HIV's double hit on brain cells HIV can trigger learning and memory deficits by launching a double attack on the brain, research shows. It was already known that a protein on the surface of the virus could kill off mature brain cells. But the latest study shows it also prevents the production of replacements by crippling cells with the potential to step in and take their place. The University of California at San Diego study appears in the journal Cell Stem Cell. The researchers hope their work, which was carried out on mice, will aid efforts to find new ways to combat HIV-associated dementia. Researcher Dr Marcus Kaul said: "It's a double hit to the brain. "The HIV protein both causes brain injury and prevents its repair." The success of antiretroviral therapies in keeping "viral load" down has helped to reduce the severity of HIV-associated dementia in recent years. However, the condition is becoming more common as people w...

From today's New York Times : Sniff Test May Signal Disorders’ Early Stages By ELIZABETH SVOBODA Published: August 14, 2007 [snip] The Sniff Magnitude Test, developed with the aid of a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, consists of a nasal tube called a cannula attached to a plastic container about the size and shape of a coffee thermos. Chemical vapors inside the canister are released through the tube, exposing subjects to a series of smells, some more objectionable than others. “People describe some of the smells as skunky or sewerlike,” said Jason Bailie, a University of Cincinnati graduate student working on the test. “There’s also one that smells like banana.” As patients take whiffs of each new fragrance, sensors in the thermos unit measure the negative pressure the inhalations produce. The size and intensity of these sniffs turn out to be important gauges of olfactory ability. After detecting a strong or disagreeable odor, people with a normal sense o...

From tomorrow's New York Times : The Beam of Light That Flips a Switch That Turns on the Brain By INGFEI CHEN Published: August 14, 2007 [snip] One of the newest, fastest strategies co-opts a photosensitive protein called channelrhodopsin-2 from pond scum to allow precise laser control of the altered cells on a millisecond timescale. That speed mimics the natural electrical chatterings of the brain, said Dr. Karl Deisseroth, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford. “We can start to sort of speak the language of the brain using optical excitation,” Dr. Deisseroth said. The brain’s functions “arise from the orchestrated participation of all the different cell types, like in a symphony,” he said. Laser stimulation can serve as a musical conductor, manipulating the various kinds of neurons in the brain to reveal which important roles they play. This light-switch technology promises to accelerate scientists’ efforts in mapping which clusters of the brain’s 100 billion neuro...

Chaudhuri KR, Martinez-Martin P, Brown RG, Sethi K, Stocchi F, Odin P, Ondo W, Abe K, Macphee G, Macmahon D, Barone P, Rabey M, Forbes A, Breen K, Tluk S, Naidu Y, Olanow W, Williams AJ, Thomas S, Rye D, Tsuboi Y, Hand A, & Schapira AH. The metric properties of a novel non-motor symptoms scale for Parkinson's disease: Results from an international pilot study. Movement Disorders. 2007 Aug 2; [Epub ahead of print]. National Parkinson Foundation Centre of Excellence, Kings College Hospital, London, United Kingdom. Non-motor symptoms (NMS) in Parkinson's disease (PD) are common, significantly reduce quality of life and at present there is no validated clinical tool to assess the progress or potential response to treatment of NMS. A new 30-item scale for the assessment of NMS in PD (NMSS) was developed. NMSS contains nine dimensions: cardiovascular, sleep/fatigue, mood/cognition, perceptual problems, attention/memory, gastrointestinal, urinary, sexual function, and miscellany...

The latest installment in a compelling feature series in The Seattle Times : Losing Betsy — A move nobody wanted By Marsha King The Seattle Times 05 August 2007 [snip] "I've always said I want to keep her as long as I can," Jeff said several weeks ago. "But I'm kind of reaching the end of my ability to do this stuff." Sooner than expected, that day arrived. Seven years ago, when she was 46, Betsy got a shocking diagnosis — early onset dementia — probably Alzheimer's disease. Since then, she's gone from forgetting how to fold laundry to forgetting who she is. On the morning of July 13, Jeff moved his wife to a state-licensed adult family home in Renton. Now 53, Betsy would be the youngest resident by 24 years. [snip] [ ... Read the full article ... ] Includes links to earlier reports in the series.

Mahlberg R, Walther S, Eichmann U, Tracik F, & Kunz D. Effects of rivastigmine on actigraphically monitored motor activity in severe agitation related to Alzheimer's disease: A placebo-controlled pilot study. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics. 2007 Jul-Aug; 45(1): 19-26. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité Campus Mitte, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Turmstr. 21, D-10559 Berlin, Germany. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) are effective in the treatment of cognitive symptoms in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Because the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) have also been attributed to central cholinergic deficits, we examined whether the AChEI rivastigmine can reduce motor activity as measured in a rater-independent manner by wrist actigraphy in agitated AD patients. A total of 20 consecutive AD inpatients (13 females, 7 males, 80.4+/-9.1 years, S.D.) were included from our geriatric psychiatry unit, all of whom were exhibitin...