BrainBlog

From a Brown University press release (the press release includes a graphic showing a portion of the protein): Researchers Reveal Secret of Key Protein in Brain and Heart Function 29 July 2005 Brown University researchers have solved the structure of a critical piece of SAP97, a protein used to keep hearts beating and brains learning. Results, reported by Dale Mierke in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, put science a step closer to understanding how this protein aids in brain and heart function. PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Brown University biologists have solved the structure of a critical piece of synapse-associated protein 97 (SAP97) found in abundance in the heart and head, where it is believed to play a role in everything from cardiac contractions to memory creation. Results are published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Dale Mierke, associate professor of medical science at Brown, said that knowing how a piece of SAP97 is built is an important step. Now that part of the protein’s...

A number of years ago, I wrote a short piece about the profession of neuropsychology for one of those regional hospital and medical-center monthly newspapers (the kind you can find stacked up at entrances to various medical facilities). I revised it a bit and posted it on my website several years ago. It remains there, should you need an answer to this question: " What is Neuropsychology? " - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

Aalia Wayfare's Radio Weblog points to an interesting article about the use of neuroscientific principles in architectual design in its post: Neuroscience and Architecture . Architectual niche interest in brain function, health, and disease, goes back at least twenty years (if not longer) in the design of, for example, hospitals and living facilities for those with Alzheimer disease and other dementia-causing neurodegenerative processes. This interest has yet to become a mainstream one in the profession. However, interest continues to grow. The article pointed to above provides a decent overview. Visit the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture for additional information. - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

A press release from the National Institutes of Health (NIH): Combination Therapy Leads to Partial Recovery from Spinal Cord Injury in Rats NIH News National Institutes of Health Tuesday, July 26, 2005, 5:00 p.m. ET CONTACT: Natalie Frazin, Paul Girolami, 301-496-5924 Combining partially differentiated stem cells with gene therapy can promote the growth of new "insulation" around nerve fibers in the damaged spinal cords of rats, a new study shows. The treatment, which mimics the activity of two nerve growth factors, also improves the animals' motor function and electrical conduction from the brain to the leg muscles. The finding may eventually lead to new ways of treating spinal cord injury in humans. The study was funded in part by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of ...

From The Seattle Times : Biotech Watch: Biotech companies scramble to develop brain-related products By Steve Johnson Knight Ridder Newspapers The Seattle Times Monday, July 25, 2005 SAN JOSE, Calif. — The prospect of a billion people nearing the age when they risk brain-related illnesses like Alzheimer's disease or chronic pain is helping fuel a costly scramble by biotechnology firms to find solutions. The San Francisco Bay Area has more than 30 companies, out of about 300 worldwide, developing brain-related products for everything from sleep and anxiety disorders to multiple sclerosis and stroke. Much of the focus of "the brain industry," as it is dubbed, is on finding treatments for ailments likely to hit aging baby boomers. [ ... Read the full article ... ] The article discusses some successes and challenges to success in this field, including vignettes about Saegis Pharmaceuticals (Alzheimer disease and cognitive loss), Micrus Endovascular (surgical interventions), ...

From The New York Times : Who's That Strange Monkey in the Mirror? By NICHOLAS WADE The New York Times Published: July 26, 2005 Humans, the great apes and, probably, dolphins share an intellectual skill unusual in the animal world: they recognize their own reflections in a mirror. Capuchin monkeys, a new study says, understand that the image in the mirror is not a stranger, but they don't know it's their own. That ability seems to mark a bright line between these species and monkeys, who, scientists have long assumed, look into mirrors and see only strangers. But a monkey's reaction to its reflection is more complex than is generally assumed, said Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Dr. de Waal and his colleagues were able to test the widely held belief that monkeys see strangers in the mirror using two troops of tufted capuchin monkeys at the Yerkes Center that had never met each other. The capuchins, the Yerkes team is reporting ...

Ardesheer Talati and Joy Hirsch. Functional Specialization within the Medial Frontal Gyrus for Perceptual Go/No-Go Decisions Based on "What," "When," and "Where" Related Information: An fMRI Study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience . 2005; 17: 981-993. fMRI Research Center, Department of Radiology, Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University , Neurological Institute, Box B-41, 710 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032. Cortical systems engaged during executive and volitional functions receive and integrate input from multiple systems. However, these integration processes are not well understood. In particular, it is not known whether these input pathways converge or remain segregated at the executive levels of cortical information processing. If unilateral information streams are conserved within structures that serve high-level executive functions, then the functional organization within these structures would predictably be similarly org...

From the company's press release: Takeda Receives Approval from the Food and Drug Administration for ROZEREM™ (ramelteon) Osaka, Japan, July 23, 2005 - Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (“Takeda”) today announced that its US based global research and development organization, Takeda Global Research & Development Center Inc. has received an approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for ROZEREM (ramelteon), 8 mg tablets for the treatment of insomnia. ROZEREM is the first and only prescription sleep medication not designated as a controlled substance by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America, Inc. will market ROZEREM in the US market. ROZEREM has a unique therapeutic mechanism of action as compared to existing insomnia treatments because it selectively targets two receptors in the brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) . The SCN is known as the body's "master clock" because it regulates 24-hour or...

Visser MR, Oort FJ, & Sprangers MA. Methods to detect response shift in quality of life data: A convergent validity study. Quality of Life Research. 2005 Apr; 14(3): 629-639. Department of Medical Psychology, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. When measuring changes in quality of life (QL) with a pretest-posttest design, response shift can affect results. We investigated the convergent validity of three approaches to detect response shift. (1) In the thentest approach, response shift is measured using a retrospective judgment of pretest QL-levels (thentest). (2) In the anchor-recalibration approach response shift is measured, assessing shifts in patients' individual definitions of the scale-anchors (worst and best imaginable QL) over time. (3) In the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach response shift is indicated by mathematically defined changes in factor solutions and variance-covariance matrices over time. Prior to and three months ...

Forbes.com offers a take on what's happening in the insomnia market: The Next Ambien? Matthew Herper Forbes.com 07.21.05, 6:00 AM ET Read the article . - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

From The New York Times : Very Premature Babies Are Still at Risk, Researchers Find By DENISE GRADY The New York Times Published: July 20, 2005 Children born prematurely at weights of 2.2 pounds or less during the 1990's have high rates of mental and physical disability, despite advances in treatment that doctors had hoped would improve their conditions, researchers are reporting today. Although such infants were much more likely to survive than those born in previous decades - the survival rate was 70 percent in the 1990's, compared with 50 percent in the 1970's and 80's - they were just as likely to suffer from significant disabilities. Asthma, cerebral palsy, vision and hearing disorders, low I.Q., poor school performance and social difficulties are among the problems described in The Journal of the American Medical Association by doctors at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland. Such disabilities were far more common in the children born premature...

A brief overview to some of the anticipated insomnia medications trending from this year to next, this is from a recent Reuters report, as published on the International Herald Tribune website: New entries shake insomnia market's slumber Reuters FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2005 LONDON The sleeping pill market, long dominated by Sanofi-Aventis's Ambien, is waking up to a rush of new competition.   Improved treatments could double the insomnia market by the end of the decade, but the French company's share of business is set to shrink dramatically, according to industry analysts.   The latest challenger is Takeda Pharmaceutical's Rozerem, or ramelteon, which industry sources say could win approval in the crucial U.S. market as early as next week. The expected approval comes hard on the heels of the successful U.S. debut of Sepracor's Lunesta in April.   Another two competitors - from two U.S. pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer and Merck - are expected in 2006 and 2008, respect...

O'Sullivan M, Morris RG, & Markus HS. Brief cognitive assessment for patients with cerebral small vessel disease. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry . 2005 Aug; 76(8): 1140-1145. Division of Clinical Neuroscience, St George's Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 0RE, UK. BACKGROUND: Cerebral small vessel disease is a common cause of cognitive impairment and vascular dementia. The cognitive deficit differs from that in Alzheimer's disease, with greater executive/attentional dysfunction and relatively intact episodic memory. OBJECTIVE: To develop brief assessment tools that are better adapted to the neuropsychological profile of cerebral small vessel disease. METHODS: 32 subjects with ischaemic leukoaraiosis (history of lacunar stroke and leukoaraiosis on MRI), aged 50 to 84 years, and 17 age and education matched controls had a brief executive assessment, which took 20 minutes to administer, and a wide range of additional tests. The abi...

A post at Brain Waves (Zack Lynch) outlining news from BrainCells, Inc . - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

From: RTE Ireland : Elan releases Tysabri trial figures July 19, 2005 11:09 Pharmaceutical  company Elan has released figures showing that its suspended Tysabri drug improved the effectiveness of Biogen's Avonex in the treatment of multiple sclerosis. 'The addition of Tysabri to Avonex resulted in a 24% reduction in the risk of disability progression compared to the effect provided by Avonex alone,' the two companies said. There was also a 56% relative reduction in the rate of clinical relapses. The companies halted sales of and trials of Tysabri in late February after it was discovered that some patients taking the drug in combination with another treatment had contracted a rare brain disease called PML. The two firms are currently conducting a safety review before a decision can be made on a possible return of Tysabri to the market. Elan reports its second quarter results on July 28, and may give an update on the progress of the review then. Shares in Elan were up 28 cen...

News about this controversial issue (See the list at the bottom of this posting for earlier BrainBlog posts.) From the company's press release: FDA APPROVES CYBERONICS’ VNS THERAPY™ SYSTEM FOR TREATMENT-RESISTANT DEPRESSION (TRD) First FDA-Approved Treatment Specifically for TRD First Implantable Device-Based Treatment for Depression Conference Call Scheduled for Monday, July 18 at 8:00 AM EDT Investor/Analyst Day at Cyberonics Scheduled for July 25-26 HOUSTON, Texas, July 15, 2005 -- Cyberonics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CYBX) today announced that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) Therapy System “for the adjunctive long-term treatment of chronic or recurrent depression for patients 18 years of age or older who are experiencing a major depressive episode and have not had an adequate response to four or more adequate antidepressant treatments.” VNS Therapy is delivered from a small pacemaker-like generator implanted in the chest th...

Godbolt AK, Josephs KA, Revesz T, Warrington EK, Lantos P, King A, Fox NC, Al Sarraj S, Holton J, Cipolotti L, Khan MN, & Rossor MN. Sporadic and familial dementia with ubiquitin-positive tau-negative inclusions: Clinical features of one histopathological abnormality underlying frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Archives of Neurology . 2005 Jul; 62(7): 1097-1101. Author Affiliations: Dementia Research Centre. BACKGROUND: Frontotemporal lobar degeneration comprises a group of diseases with clinical presentations and underlying histopathologies that overlap. Familial disease occurs in up to 50% of frontotemporal lobar degeneration cases. One of several underlying histopathological abnormalities is of ubiquitin-positive tau-negative inclusions, similar to those in motor neuron disease. OBJECTIVE: To compare clinical features of familial and sporadic cases in this pathological subgroup.Design and Patients Case note review of dementia patients with ubiquitin-positive tau-negative inclu...

The 9th Congress of the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS) will be held in Athens, Greece, from the 17th through the 20th of September, 2005. The conference includes a special session on the topics of Neurology and Art and Sequels of cerebral lesions in artists: Reflections on the neurology of creativity, organized by Drs. Julien Bogousslavsky of Lausanne, Switzerland and François Boller of Paris, France. Information about the conference can be found at the EFNS 2005 webpage . - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

Dr. Lizabeth Romanski presents Encoding and integration of communication signals by the primate prefrontal cortex as part of the 2005-2006 NIH Neuroscience Seminar Series. 12 Noon, Building 10's Lipsett Amphitheater on the campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD. - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

Here is the Executive Summary of the newly released Foresight report on cognition enhancers: Executive Summary "The search for treatments for dementia, alongside other scientific and societal changes, has prompted the development of symptomatic treatments and disease-modifying drugs for people with degenerative brain diseases, mild cognitive impairment, and psychiatric diseases that involve cognition impairment. The enhancement of aspects of cognition, such as learning and memory, now seems possible for people with normal age-related decline and in healthy people, although so far the effects of these cognition enhancers are modest. The next two decades are likely to bring deeper knowledge of the mechanisms of learning, memory, and forgetting, together with an understanding of the relationship between changes in molecules, cells and brain circuits, and changes in cognition. Already, research efforts by the pharmaceutical industry are poised to deliver many more disease modifiers a...