BrainBlog

From the Agency for Heatlhcare Research and Quality: Clinician Guide: Depression After Traumatic Brain Injury 13 April 2011 Read the guide

Available for streaming and as a podcast, from WNYC: "Diane Ackerman's One Hundred Names for Love" Listen 22 April 2011 WNYC Leonard Lopate Show "Diane Ackerman talks about her husband, Paul West’s, stroke and long recovery. He was afflicted with aphasia—loss of language—and Diane, frustrated with traditional therapies, relied on her scientific understanding of language and the brain to guide Paul back to the world of words. Her book One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing is an account of stroke, aphasia, and recovery, as well a love story."

Guidelines Allow Earlier Definition of Alzheimer’s By PAM BELLUCK The New York Times Published: April 19, 2011 "The definition of the disease will be recast for the first time in 27 years, with a division into three stages, including a new early phase." Read the full article

From MedPage Today : FDA Puts Early Alzheimer's Test on Hold By Peggy Peck, Executive Editor MedPage Today Published: March 18, 2011 [snip] "The FDA will not approve the novel contrast agent, florbetapir -- widely touted as a breakthrough for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease -- until manufacturer Eli Lilly puts a training program in place, the company announced." [snip] Read the article .

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.

Untangling the brain by Nature Video 09 March 2011 Watch the YouTube video

From The New York Times : On the Left Hand, There Are No Easy Answers By PERRI KLASS, M.D. The New York Times Published: March 6, 2011 "The riddle of why about 10 percent of people are born with the left-dominant variety of this essentially human asymmetry remains." Read the article

Brain Awareness Week is coming up quickly. Here is the Dana Foundation's website for the event: Brain Awareness Week . From the website: "Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is the global campaign to increase public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research. Every March BAW unites the efforts of organizations worldwide in a week-long celebration of the brain. "During BAW campaign partners organize activities to educate and excite people of all ages about the brain and brain research. Events are limited only by the organizers’ imaginations. Examples include open days at neuroscience laboratories; museum exhibitions about the brain; lectures on brain-related topics; displays at malls, libraries, and community centers; and classroom workshops." If you know something about the brain, then teach something to someone who does not. It's simple and easy! Enjoy!

Britain is bottom of Euro league table at diagnosing Alzheimer's Britons with symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease take twice as long to be diagnosed as sufferers living in other European countries, research has found. By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent The Telegraph 9:00PM GMT 26 Feb 2011 Read the article

Investors ready to craft new biotechs out of Pfizer's discards February 9, 2011 — 8:47am ET By John Carroll FierceBiotech Read the article

From The Guardian : Cuts disastrous for brain science research, academics warn At least 30 neuroscience units to go under cuts proposed by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Ian Sample guardian.co.uk Thursday 10 February 2011 21.14 GMT [snip] "The closure of drug company research facilities and "draconian" funding cuts will have a disastrous impact on brain science in Britain, senior academics have warned. "At least 30 neuroscience research groups are expected to fold under cuts proposed by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), adding to jobs already lost after big pharmaceutical companies shut research programmes or moved them abroad." [snip] Read the full article

The University of Victoria is honouring alumnus Chris Fibiger, neuroscientist, this evening, along with ten other distinguished graduates. Read the full press release

From FierceBiotech : Fluorescent peptides help nerves glow in surgery 08 February 2011 Read the press release

From The Atlantic.com : Giffords's Superspecialized Brain Doctor: Adding Insight to Injury by Ford Vox The Atlantic.com 07 February 2011 "A crucial part of Gabby Giffords's intensive brain injury rehabilitation at The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (TIRR) in Houston involves serial assessments and counsel by a neuropsychologist, a superspecialized breed of clinician many people know little about. "Rehabilitation teams count count on expert neuropsychologists to administer formal standardized tests and analyze those results in light of clinical data. The best neuropsychological reports are veritable Rosetta stones." Read the article

From The BBC : Blood test for vCJD 'could identify carriers' By Sonya McGilchrist BBC News 2 February 2011 Last updated at 20:22 ET [snip] A blood test for variant CJD has been developed by British scientists. Currently patients suspected of having the human form of BSE have to undergo a series of tests, including a brain biopsy, to confirm a diagnosis. The new test, reported in The Lancet , offers the chance of earlier diagnosis and potentially the ability to screen donor blood. But further studies are needed before it can be widely used to screen healthy people who may be silent carriers. [snip] Read the full article

The 9th Annual Mild Cognitive Impairment Symposium will take place in late April in Miami Beach, Florida. The theme of the meeting is "New Criteria for Prodromal and Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease" The website for the conference can be found at: mcisymposium.org . The Twitter voice of the conference is @mcisymposium

A press release from the National Institutes of Health : Little-known growth factor enhances memory, prevents forgetting in rats Works only if given during windows of memory malleability NIH News Wednesday, January 26, 2011 Read the full press release Quoting from the release: A naturally occurring growth factor significantly boosted retention and prevented forgetting of a fear memory when injected into rats’ memory circuitry during time-limited windows when memories become fragile and changeable. In the study funded by the National Institutes of Health, animals treated with insulin-like growth factor (IGF-II) excelled at remembering to avoid a location where they had previously experienced a mild shock. "To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of potent memory enhancement via a naturally occurring factor that readily passes through the blood-brain barrier — and thus may hold promise for treatment development," explained Cristina Alberini, Ph.D., of Mount Sinai Scho...

The Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society (INS) occurs this week. Here is the program overview: click here .

From The Observer VS Ramachandran: The Marco Polo of neuroscience Among his contemporaries he's a pioneer who, by using real mirrors and looking at mirror neurons, is changing the way we think about thinking Andrew Anthony The Observer Sunday, 30 January 2011 Read the article

The website of Houston's TIRR rehabilitation center, lately in the news: The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research From the homepage: "TIRR treats people with a range of disabilities from complex conditions like brain injury, stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple trauma and amputation, to rehabilitation for conditions including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, post-polio syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus." Here is a sample newsletter: Summer 2010