BrainBlog

From The New York Times : Self-Portraits Chronicle a Descent Into Alzheimer’s By DENISE GRADY The New York Times Published: October 24, 2006 When he learned in 1995 that he had Alzheimer’s disease, William Utermohlen , an American artist in London, responded in characteristic fashion. “From that moment on, he began to try to understand it by painting himself,” said his wife, Patricia Utermohlen, a professor of art history. Mr. Utermohlen’s self-portraits are being exhibited through Friday at the New York Academy of Medicine in Manhattan, by the Alzheimer’s Association. The paintings starkly reveal the artist’s descent into dementia, as his world began to tilt, perspectives flattened and details melted away. His wife and his doctors said he seemed aware at times that technical flaws had crept into his work, but he could not figure out how to correct them. “The spatial sense kept slipping, and I think he knew,” Professor Utermohlen said. A psychoanalyst wrote that ...

From the FDA last week: FDA Approves Expanded Use of Treatment for Patients With Severe Alzheimer's Disease FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE P06-168 October 13, 2006 Media Inquiries: Susan Cruzan, 301-827-6242 Consumer Inquiries: 888-INFO-FDA The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved Aricept (donepezil hydrochloride) for the treatment of severe dementia in patients with Alzheimer's Disease. Aricept was previously approved for the treatment of mild to moderate dementia of the Alzheimer's type.  It now becomes the first product approved for the treatment of all degrees of severity of the disease.  "Alzheimer's Disease is a devastating, age-associated brain disorder that affects an estimated 4.5 million Americans -- and, as our population grows older, this number is expected to multiply," said Dr. Steven Galson, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "Today's approval makes available another trea...

In the past two years there have been quite a number of fictional works dealing with the brain and its disorders. I just found a new entry to that niche area of fiction in one of my neighborhood bookstores this afternoon: The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (FSG Press). The condition, Capgras. The dedication page, a quote by Luria. Powers has done some remarkable fiction with the intertwine of Glenn Gould's recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations and DNA in the massive The Gold Bug Variations and with medical science, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality in other works.

From an NIH press release from 18 October 2006:  New Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials To Be Undertaken by NIA Nationwide Consortium The Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), a federally-established consortium conducting clinical trials on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), will receive $52 million over six years to conduct several new trials, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today. The award is a cooperative agreement between the NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), which coordinates the consortium of nearly 70 sites in the United States and Canada. The purpose of the award is to test drugs for their effectiveness in slowing down the progression or treating the symptoms of AD, as well as to investigate new methods for conducting dementia research. ...

From the Science website: Asleep at the Memory Wheel By Greg Miller ScienceNOW Daily News 18 October 2006 ATLANTA, GEORGIA--Going a night without sleep may cause your hippocampus to go on strike. A new study has caught this crucial memory-encoding brain region slacking off in college students the day after they've pulled an all-nighter. The study is one of the first to investigate how sleep deprivation interferes with memory mechanisms in the human brain. Neuroscientist Matthew Walker of Harvard University and his colleagues paid 10 undergraduate students to forgo a night's sleep. The next day, the students viewed a series of 30 words, and two days later--after having two nights to catch up on their sleep--the students returned to the lab and took a test to see how well they remembered the words they'd seen. The students recalled about 40% fewer words overall than a group of 10 students who had slept normally, Walker reported here yester...

From today's New York TImes : Atlas Squeaked: A Complete Map of the Brain of a Mouse By NICHOLAS WADE Published: September 26, 2006 The New York Times Scientists have gained a new window for peering into the brain, courtesy of a $41 million project financed by Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft. The project is an electronic atlas that shows which genes are switched on in neurons throughout the brain of a mouse. Instead of looking at one gene at a time in one or a few neurons, researchers can now study all the brain genes systematically. And instead of having to visualize each gene experimentally, everything is available online. “I am using it all the time,” said Catherine Dulac, who studies mouse behavior at Harvard. “It’s an extraordinary resource.” Marc Tessier-Lavigne, an expert on neuronal signaling and vice president for research at Genentech, said he would put the new brain atlas “on a par with the human genome project.” Both are members of the scientific advisory...

Brinton RD & Wang JM (2006). Therapeutic potential of neurogenesis for prevention and recovery from Alzheimer's disease: allopregnanolone as a proof of concept neurogenic agent . Curr Alzheimer Res., 3(3), 185-190. Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology and Program in Neuroscience, Pharmaceutical Science Center, 1985 Zonal Avenue, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA. A major challenge not yet addressed by current therapeutic interventions for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the regeneration of lost neurons and neural circuitry to restore cognitive function. Therapies that lead to cessation of the degenerative process still leave the brain riddled with deteriorated neural circuits and reduced neuron number. The discovery of neurogenesis in the adult brain and the regenerative potential of neural stem cells holds the promise for restoration of neural populations and regeneration of neural circuits necessary for cerebral function. While the...

From today's Philadelphia Inquirer : Penn psychiatrist to be honored today Aaron T. Beck will receive the prestigious Lasker Award for his pioneering work in cognitive therapy. By Josh Goldstein Inquirer Staff Writer 17 September 2006 In the 1960s, University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck began to develop the theories and practice of a new branch of psychoanalysis known as cognitive therapy. Beck's more than 40 years of pioneering work at Penn is being honored today with the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research. The Lasker awards are given annually for "stunning" achievements in basic and clinical research in medicine. The awards are often likened to Nobel Prizes and come with a $100,000 honorarium. Cognitive therapy, which treats mental problems including depression, anxiety disorders and phobias, is based on the premise that thoughts, feelings and actions are interwoven. Patients are taught to identify their negative, sometimes ...

Pavlik VN, Doody RS, Massman PJ, & Chan W. (2006). Influence of premorbid IQ and education on progression of Alzheimer's Disease. Dementia, Geriatrics, & Cognitive Disorders, 22(4), 367-377. [Epub ahead of print] Department of Family and Community Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Tex., USA. Background: Lower education is associated with a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). Years of education and measures of general intellectual function (IQ) are highly correlated. It is important to determine whether there is a relationship between education and AD outcomes that is independent of IQ. Objective: To test the hypothesis that premorbid IQ is a stronger predictor of cognitive decline, global progression, and overall survival, than education in patients with AD. Methods: The study included 478 probable AD patients (322 women and 156 men, mean age 74.5 years) followed in a large AD referral center for a mean of 3.2 years. Eligible participants...

From an NIH press release from earlier today: NIH Launches Knockout Mouse Project Genome-Wide Public Resource Will Provide New Mouse Models for Understanding Human Disease The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today awarded a set of cooperative agreements, totaling up to $52 million over five years, to launch the Knockout Mouse Project. The goal of this program is to build a comprehensive and publicly available resource of knockout mutations in the mouse genome. The knockout mice produced from this resource will be extremely useful for the study of human disease. The NIH Knockout Mouse Project will work closely with other large-scale efforts to produce knockouts that are underway in Canada, called the North American Conditional Mouse Mutagenesis Project (NorCOMM), and in Europe, called the European Conditional Mouse Mutagenesis Program (EUCOMM). The...

From The New York Times : Gene Found to Switch Off Stem Cells During Aging By NICHOLAS WADE Published: September 6, 2006 Biologists have uncovered a deep link between lifespan and cancer in the form of a gene that switches off stem cells as a person ages. The critical gene, already well known for its role in suppressing tumors, seems to mediate a profound balance between life and death. It weighs the generation of new replacement cells, required for continued life, against the risk of death from cancer, which is the inevitable outcome of letting cells divide. To offset the increasing risk of cancer as a person ages, the gene gradually reduces the ability of stem cells to proliferate. The new finding, reported by three groups of researchers online Wednesday in Nature , was made in a special breed of mice that lack the pivotal gene, but is thought likely to apply to people as well. The finding indicates that many of the degenerative diseases of aging are caused by an active shut...

From today's New York Times : Doctors Give Hope to Patients With Long Histories of Unexplained Symptoms By DAN HURLEY 22 August 2006 People with a long history of medically unexplained symptoms — aches, pains, fatigue, dizziness and other complaints for which doctors can find no physical cause — might finally find relief. Two new studies by researchers who specialize in the baffling condition called somatization syndrome, estimated to affect up to 3 percent of adults, suggest that the quest for a physical explanation may take on a destructive life of its own. Instead, those with the syndrome should focus on practical strategies to regain normal function and relieve symptoms, the researchers say. One study, by German scientists, sought to explain why the doctors’ reassurances were generally ineffective with such patients. The researchers played taped comments by a doctor about a hypothetical patient for two groups of participants, people who had the syndrome and people who did not. ...

Josephson SA, Hills NK, & Johnston SC (2006). NIH Stroke Scale reliability in ratings from a large sample of clinicians. . Cerebrovascular Disorders, , 22(5-6), 389-395 Objective: The NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS) is widely used in stroke clinical care and trials. Certification in its use, most commonly through rating of video vignettes, is routinely required. To investigate the reliability of the NIHSS in a representative sample of raters, we examined the results of the most frequently used certification examination. Methods: At the invitation of the National Stroke Association, we analyzed the results of all raters who completed one of two multiple patient videotaped certification examinations from 1998 to 2004. Total scores for each vignette were calculated and ratings were compared based on percentile of responses and modified kappa scores. Results: There were 7,405 unique raters with 38,148 individual NIHSS item responses; median scores for each vignette ranged from 0 to 31. Total...

Takahashi T. Time-estimation error following Weber-Fechner law may explain subadditive time-discounting. . Medical Hypotheses. 2006 Jul 25; [Epub ahead of print] Department of Cognitive and Behavioral Science, The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan. Impulsivity in drug addicts have been associated with impatience in intertemporal choice, i.e., high degrees to which delayed rewards are discounted, indicating the importance of reducing the degree of discounting in drug addicts. Intertemporal choice (delay discounting) has been attracting attention in neuropsychopharmacology and behavioral neuroeconomics. Recently, behavioral economists have reported that impatience/impulsivity in intertemporal choice is increased if a delay period is presented as a sum of divided time-blocks, which is referred to as subadditive discounting (i.e., "total patience" over the delay period is larger than the "sum of patience" over divided delay periods). This...

International Neuropsychological Society (INS) mid-year conference taking place this week in Zurich, Switzerland. Visit the conference website for more information: website . - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

Most everyone reading this will have had a closer degree of connection with Virginia Apgar than they know. Who is Virginia Apgar, you ask? When born, most of you will have received an Apgar Score in the delivery room. She created it. Did you know?... (grin) virginia and her brother From an NIH press release on the 13th of July: Papers of Virginia Apgar Added to National Library of Medicine's Profiles in Science Web Site Bethesda, Maryland - The National Library of Medicine's Profiles in Science Web site has been enriched by the addition of the papers of Virginia Apgar, M.D., creator of the widely used Apgar Score to evaluate newborns. The Library has collaborated with the Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections to digitize her papers and make them widely available. This brings to 18 the number of notable scientists who have personal and professional recor...

I received a couple of new books on neuroethics from The Dana Center. The first one I started to read is Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense by bioethicist Jonathan D. Moreno, Ph.D. It's been a fascinating read so far. The cover blurb points to coverage of how neuroscience may influence warfare and the ethical and policy issues that are likely to be confronted. I'm curious as to what arguments and points will emerge in Moreno's presentation! The other book is Hard Science, Hard Choices: Facts, Ethics, and Policies Guiding Brain Science Today by Sandra J. Ackerman. - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

Last week's issue of The New Yorker (03 July 2006) included an excellent Annals of Medicine essay on hemispherectomy, The Deepest Cut, written by Christine Kenneally. She follows the lives of two individuals, Lacy and Christina, and provides a succinct overview to the indications for this operative procedure and its outcomes. - Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain

Cummings JL, McRae T, & Zhang R. (2006). Effects of donepezil on neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with dementia and severe behavioral disorders. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 14(7), 605-612. Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California (JLC); and Pfizer, Inc., New York, New York (TM, RZ). Objective: The objective of this study was to conduct exploratory analyses of data pertaining to the efficacy of donepezil treatment of patients with severe behavioral disturbances. Preliminary studies suggest that cholinesterase inhibitors, including donepezil, may reduce behavioral disturbances in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). Most patients included in clinical trials have had low levels of psychopathology at baseline, and the effect of cholinesterase inhibitors on patients with more severe behavioral disturbances is unknown. The authors report the effects of donepezil on behavioral...

From an NIH press release on 04 July 2006: Dopamine Drug Leads to New Neurons and Recovery of Function in Rat Model of Parkinson's Disease In preliminary results, researchers have shown that a drug which mimics the effects of the nerve-signaling chemical dopamine causes new neurons to develop in the part of the brain where cells are lost in Parkinson's disease (PD). The drug also led to long-lasting recovery of function in an animal model of PD. The findings may lead to new ways of treating PD and other neurodegenerative diseases. The study was funded in part by the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The study suggests that drugs which affect dopamine D3 receptors might trigger new neurons to grow in humans with the disease. Some of these drugs are commonly used to treat PD. The finding also suggest...