BrainBlog

For individuals wishing to learn about functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), two great online resources come to mind. The first is an excellent collection of PowerPoint lectures by Dr. Jody Culham of the University of Western Ontario, available on her website fMRI For Dummies . These lectures are extraordinarily well organized. The second is another excellent collection - of multimedia streams (for Windows and Mac): Dr. Geoffrey Aguirre's fMRI Course, November 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania. - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

Hengst JA, Frame SR, Neuman-Stritzel T, & Gannaway R. Using others' words: Conversational use of reported speech by individuals with aphasia and their communication partners. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research . 2005 Feb; 48(1): 137-156. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61820, USA. Reported speech, wherein one quotes or paraphrases the speech of another, has been studied extensively as a set of linguistic and discourse practices. Researchers agree that reported speech is pervasive, found across languages, and used in diverse contexts. However, to date, there have been no studies of the use of reported speech among individuals with aphasia. Grounded in an interactional sociolinguistic perspective, the study presented here documents and analyzes the use of reported speech by 7 adults with mild to moderately severe aphasia and their routine communication partners. Each of the 7 pairs was videotaped in 4 everyday ...

To celebrate the career of Shelby Foote, 88-year-old novelist and Civil War historian, who died last night, here's an abstract about head injuries during the Civil War: Kaufman HH. Treatment of head injuries in the American Civil War . Journal of Neurosurgery . 1993 May; 78(5): 838-845. Department of Neurosurgery, West Virginia University School of Medicine, Morgantown. At the time of the American Civil War (1861-1865), a great deal was known about closed head injury and gunshot wounds to the head. Compression was differentiated from concussion, but localization of lesions was not precise. Ether and especially chloroform were used to provide anesthesia. Failure to understand how to prevent infection discouraged physicians from aggressive surgery. Manuals written to educate inexperienced doctors at the onset of the war provide an overview of the advice given by senior surgeons. The Union experiences in the treatment of head injury in the Civil War were discussed in the three surgica...

From an AP report posted at Yahoo! : Acadia Pharma Says Drug Study Encouraging Wednesday June 22, 7:44 pm ET Acadia Pharmaceuticals Says Lead Drug Helped Psychosis in Parkinson's Patients; Shares Fall SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc. on Wednesday said an ongoing mid-stage trial showed that its experimental drug did a better job than a placebo in reducing hallucinations and delusions in Parkinson's disease patients who suffer treatment-induced psychosis. [snip] Acadia said patients taking ACP-103 -- its lead drug candidate -- showed a greater reduction in psychotic symptoms than those taking a placebo, particularly lower hallucinations and delusions. The study involves 60 patients and the interim data came from an analysis of the first 30 patients to complete the trial. Acadia said no serious side effects were reported from ACP-103. [ ... Read the full article ... ] ~ From the Acadia website: " ACP-103, a proprietary small molecule discovered by ACADIA, is...

On the 15th of October 2005, a meeting will be held on the campus of Princeton University: Cognitive Neuroscience at Penn and Princeton: Graduate Student Symposium . Refer to the meeting webpage [click here] for additional information. - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

From The Los Angeles Times : Cricket 'Hearing' Sense Copied in Lab By Alex Raksin The Los Angeles Times 25 June 2005 Crickets are famous for making a racket disproportionate to their size. What has drawn many biologists to them, however, is their "hearing" — or more precisely, how they use cerci, super-sensitive hairs on their back, to pinpoint minute shifts in air currents, such as the waft of an attacking wasp or spider. Now, a team of physicists has recreated an admittedly crude facsimile of the insects' efficient sensory system in the lab. Attaching a few hundred thin plastic wires to sockets on silicon wafer sheets, the researchers developed "a prototype for technologies, such as hearing aids and sensors, that could help aerospace engineers visualize how air currents move across wings," said Gijs Krijnen, a physicist who led the project with colleague Remco Wiegerink at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. They describe their work in the cu...

From the BBC : Test 'identifies new stroke risk' Doctors have developed a simple checklist to show if patients who have had a mini-stroke are at immediate risk of a more serious attack. The Oxford University team, writing in the Lancet, said it could help identify those needing emergency treatment. It looks at age, blood pressure, symptoms and how long the mini-stroke, or transient ischemic attack, lasted. UK guidelines say all such patients should be checked within seven days, but many wait at least two weeks. The researchers say their guide could be used to help identify the 10% of patients who are at risk of having a major stroke within seven days of a mini-stroke. Giving this group blood-thinning drugs or other treatments to reduce their blood pressure or cholesterol can cut their risk of further attacks. [ ... Read the full article ... ] ~ The study was headed by Dr. Peter Rothwell . - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

The full-text contents of the following article is available on the Pediatrics website at this link [Click here] : Ronald T. Brown, Robert W. Amler, Wendy S. Freeman, James M. Perrin, Martin T. Stein, Heidi M. Feldman, Karen Pierce, Mark L. Wolraich and the Committee on Quality Improvement, Subcommittee on Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Overview of the evidence . Pediatrics 2005; 115: e749-e757. Snipped from the Abstract: "The evidence strongly supports the use of stimulant medications for treating the core symptoms of children with ADHD and, to a lesser degree, for improving functioning. Behavior therapy alone has only limited effect on symptoms or functioning of children with ADHD, although combining behavior therapy with medication seems to improve functioning and may decrease the amount of (stimulant) medication needed. Comparison among stimulants (mainly methylphenidate and amphetamines) did not indicate t...

Pignatti R, Rabuffetti M, Imbornone E, Mantovani F, Alberoni M, Farina E, & Canal N. Specific impairments of selective attention in mild Alzheimer's disease . Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology . 2005 May; 27(4): 436-448. Neurorehabilitation Unit, Universita di Milano, Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi IRCCS, Milan, Italy. The aim of the present study was to evaluate selective visual attention in subjects affected by Alzheimer's Disease (AD), by means of a computerized spatial exploration test that adopts a Touch Screen (TS) interface, which has already proved able to characterize alternative strategies in performing search tasks. We assessed a group of 16 patients affected by mild to moderate AD, comparing them with 16 control subjects matched for age and education. In the experimental tasks the performance of the AD patients was worse than that of the normal elderly, both quantitatively (slower speeds) and qualitatively (poorer planning and higher number of ...

Ferstl EC, Walther K, Guthke T, & von Cramon DY. Assessment of story comprehension deficits after brain damage . Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology . 2005 Apr; 27(3): 367-384. Day Clinic for Cognitive Neurology , University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany. A story comprehension task was specifically developed for the clinical diagnosis of text comprehension deficits. The performance of 49 healthy control participants on qualitatively different Yes/No questions confirmed that both salience and explicitness of information had an impact on question difficulty. An unselected group of brain damaged patients (n = 96) made more errors, particularly on questions about implicit information. The subgroup of patients with left-hemispheric vascular aetiology (n = 18) had particular difficulties with stated details, patients with right-hemispheric vascular aetiology (n = 12) with implicit main ideas, and patients with traumatic brain injury (n = 34) were most impaired on implicit...

A conference on ion channels in disease biology and ion channel targets in drug discovery will be held in Waltham (Boston region), Massachusetts on the 20th and 21st of September 2005. Further information about the meeting can be found at the following webpage: Click here . - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

The new issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal includes a review article of modern and older antipsychotic medications. The article is available in free, full-content format . David M. Gardner, Ross J. Baldessarini, and Paul Waraich. Modern antipsychotic drugs: A critical overview . Canadian Medical Association Journal 2005; 72(13): 1703. Abstract CONVENTIONAL ANTIPSYCHOTIC DRUGS, used for a half century to treat a range of major psychiatric disorders, are being replaced in clinical practice by modern "atypical" antipsychotics, including aripiprazole, clozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine, risperidone and ziprasidone among others. As a class, the newer drugs have been promoted as being broadly clinically superior, but the evidence for this is problematic. In this brief critical overview, we consider the pharmacology, therapeutic effectiveness, tolerability, adverse effects and costs of individual modern agents versus older antipsychotic drugs. Because of typically ...

The International Neuropsychological Society (INS) Summer Meeting will take place in Dublin, from the 6th of July through the 9th of July 2005. This year's meeting is a joint meeting with the British Neuropsychological Society (BNS) and the Division of Neuropsychology of the British Psychological Society. The location is the Burlington Hotel. Information about the conference can be found at the meeting webpage . This year's INS Presidential Address is by Dr. Robert Heaton and is entitled Ecological Validity of Neuropsychological Tests versus Analog Measures of Everyday Functioning . - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

Neuroscapes 2006 has put out a call for submissions for what will become an art exhibition. Details are provided at the project's website. From the website: "This exhibition will be the first public display of the world best images captured within the brain by neuroscientists using a spectrum of state-of-the-art technologies. The exhibition is in honor of 100 years since Santiago Ramón y Cajal was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize with Camillo Golgi for their work on revealing the structure of the Brain. The exhibition is part of the continuing effort by the CosmoCaixa, Barcelona Science Museum of La Caixa Foundation, International Brain Research Organization (IBRO, http://www.ibro.info ) and Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC, http://www.csic.es ) to provide quality artistic and educational resources related to Neurosciences. The exhibition will contain 50 of the world's most artistic images that capture landmark concepts of how the brain works. In addition, vir...

Rapp MA, Schnaider Beeri M, Schmeidler J, Sano M, Silverman JM, Haroutunian V. Relationship of neuropsychological performance to functional status in nursing home residents and community-dwelling older adults. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry . 2005 Jun; 13(6): 450-9. Correspondence and reprint requests to Michael A. Rapp, Dept. of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, One Gustave L. Levy Pl., Box 1240, New York, NY 10029-6574. Objectives: The authors examined the association between neuropsychological tests of executive functioning and episodic memory and functional disability in nursing home residents versus community-dwelling older adults. METHODS: The neuropsychological performance of 96 residents from the Jewish Home and Hospital, Bronx, NY and 192 gender- and age-matched older adults from residential communities in the New York metropolitan area was assessed in eight tasks (Word List Recall, Delayed Recall, Recognition, Boston Naming, Verbal Fluency, Trailmaking A ...

Mary C. Tierney, PhD, Christie Yao, Alex Kiss, PhD and Ian McDowell, PhD. Neuropsychological tests accurately predict incident Alzheimer disease after 5 and 10 years. Neurology 2005; 64: 1853-1859. From the Geriatric Research Unit (Dr. Tierney and C. Yao) and Research Design and Biostatistics (Dr. Kiss), Sunnybrook & Women’s College Health Sciences Centre, Toronto; Department of Family and Community Medicine (Dr. Tierney), University of Toronto; and Department of Epidemiology & Community Medicine (Dr. McDowell), University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Mary C. Tierney, Director, Geriatric Research Unit, A145, Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4N 3M5; Objective: To determine whether neuropsychological tests accurately predict incident Alzheimer disease (AD) after 5 and 10 years in participants of the Canadian Study of Health and Agin...

A Reuters report, published in a number of different sources, including Wired News : Stem Cells Get Brainy  By Reuters 04:04 PM Jun. 13, 2005 PT WASHINGTON -- Scientists working in mice said they had found a way to identify master cells in the brain and grow them in large batches -- a potential way of helping patients grow their own brain tissue transplants. [snip] "We've isolated for the first time what appears to be the true candidate stem cell," said Dennis Steindler of the University of Florida, who worked on the study . "There have been other candidates but in this case we used a special microscope that allows us to watch living cells over long periods of time through a method called live-cell microscopy, so we've actually witnessed the stem cell give rise to new neurons. Possibly a different method may come up to identify the mother of all stem cells, but we're confident this is it." Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...

From tomorrow's Washington Post , an article about the relevance of the architecture of crossed motor and sensory pathways (cool!): What Crosses Our Minds When Danger's Afoot By David Brown Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 13, 2005; Page A08 One of the more mysterious and less-explored observations about human anatomy is also one of the oldest, going all the way back to the Father of Medicine. "If the wound be situated on the left side [of the head], the convulsion attacks the right side of the body," Hippocrates noted in the 4th century B.C. The Greek physician recognized that trauma on one side of the head could cause a seizure limited to or, more likely, starting in the limbs on the opposite side of the body. About A.D. 150, a physician named Aretaeus the Cappadocian extended this observation in a truly remarkable way. He noticed that if the right side of the head was severely damaged, the left side of the body would be paralyzed. However, if the damage ...

Wade SL, Wolfe C, Brown TM, & Pestian JP. Putting the Pieces Together: Preliminary Efficacy of a Web-Based Family Intervention for Children with Traumatic Brain Injury. Journal of Pediatric Psychology. 2005 Jul; 30(5): 437-442. Division of Pediatric Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation , Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45229-3039. OBJECTIVE: To report preliminary efficacy data from a Web-based family problem-solving intervention to improve parent and child adaptation. METHOD: Eight parents and six children with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) who were injured more than 15 months earlier (M = 16 months) participated in the intervention. Families were given computers, Web cameras, and high-speed Internet access. Weekly videoconferences with the therapist were conducted after they completed self-guided Web exercises on problem-solving, communication, and antecedent behavior management strategies. RESULTS: Paired...

From today's Boston Globe : Biogen MS drug gets lift from reports Medical journal suggests Tysabri may make a return By Jeffrey Krasner The Boston Globe 10 June 2005 Biogen Idec Inc.'s drug Tysabri might be safely given to multiple sclerosis patients if they are carefully monitored for an often fatal brain disease, according to articles in The New England Journal of Medicine. Three patients taking the medication have contracted the disease, known as PML, and a fourth case is suspected. But some doctors writing in the journal speculated that monitoring might make it possible to discontinue treatment with Tysabri -- known generically as natalizumab -- and treat patients in time to prevent PML from developing into a life-threatening illness. [ ... Read the full article ... ] ~ (Reminder: "PML" is the abbreviation for "progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy.") ~ Note: The NEJM material is accessible, online "early release" material, found on the...