Pierwszy "genetyczny" atlas mózgu

Genetyczny atlas mózgu demonstruje między innymi, że "genetyka" kory mózgowej nie pokrywa się z funkcjonalnymi i fizjologicznymi mapami mózgu. Genetyczny atlas mózgu to nowe narzędzie pozwalające zrozumieć pracę mózgu, szczególnie na poziomie genetycznym.

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Chronic Pain: Simple Strategies for Hands-On Evaluation and Effective Management

The lecture originally presented on May 21, 2011 in Austin, Texas as part of the American Pain Society’s Managing the Patient in Pain Seminar, an adjunct offering for primary care providers, in association with the APS 30th Annual Scientific Meeting. Medscape is pleased to partner with the American Pain Society to bring this important program to pain professionals.

Clear Link Between Mood and Food

There is a strong link between higher levels of nutrient intake and better mental health. Bonnie Kaplan, PhD (University of Calgary in Alberta):...People who suffer from mood disorders function better when they are eating better...It really is true that you are what you eat... Significant correlations were found between Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scores and calories, carbohydrates, fibre, total fat, linoleic acid, riboflavin, niacin, folate, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, pantothenic acid, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and iron (P < .05 for all), and magnesium (r = 0.41, P < .001) and zinc (r = 0.35, P < .001). Nutrient Intakes Are Correlated With Overall Psychiatric Functioning in Adults With Mood Disorders Karen M Davison, PhD, RD1; Bonnie J Kaplan, PhD

The PTSD Trap: Our Overdiagnosis of PTSD In Vets Is Enough to Make You Sick

David Dobbs:...When PTSD was first added to the DSM-III in 1980, traumatic memories were considered reasonably faithful recordings of actual events. But as research since then has repeatedly shown, memory is spectacularly unreliable and extraordinarily malleable. We routinely add or subtract people, details, settings, and actions to our memories. We conflate, invent, and edit... ...to make PTSD diagnosis more rigorous, some have suggested that blood chemistry, brain imaging or other tests might be able to detect physiological signatures of PTSD. Studies of stress hormones in groups of PTSD patients show differences from normal subjects, but the overlap between the normal and the PTSD groups is huge, making individual profiles useless for diagnostics. Brain imaging has similar limitations, with the abnormal dynamics in PTSD heavily overlapping those of depression and anxiety... ...With memory unreliable and biological markers elusive, diagnosis depends on clinical symptoms. But as a 2007 study showed starkly, PTSD’s symptom profile is as slippery as the would-be biomarkers... More

Why unhappy brains are better brains

David DiSalvo in his book What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite. That is are our predisposition to focus on or select the pieces of information that 'confirm' our opinion (of a person, a topic, anything) and disregard anything to the contrary.Since our brains like being happy, we like feeling right. DiSalvo:...Our need to be right is actually a need to "feel" right...In our everyday lives, though, feeling right translates into being right (because if we could admit that we only 'feel' right, then we might not really be right, and from our brains' point of view that's just not alright)...The brain doesn't merely prefer certainty over ambiguity...It craves it... In the book David DiSalvo cites a 2005 study conducted by psychologist Ming Hsu which found that even a small amount of ambiguity triggers increased activity in the amygdalae - brain clusters that relate to threat. The effect of our brains' natural inclinations, and how it can lead us to errors, biases, and distortions, is what he explores in his book. He also provides strategies for overcoming these limitations.

Personality Traits Traced in Brain

Berman, Drs. Mbemda Jabbi, Shane Kippenham, and colleagues, report on their imaging study in Williams syndrome online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Thomas R. Insel, M.D., NIMH Director ...This line of research offers insight into how genes help to shape brain circuitry that regulates complex behaviors – such as the way a person responds to others – and thus holds promise for unraveling brain mechanisms in other disorders of social behavior...

Long distance connections, white matter, between the insula and other parts of the brain are aberrant in Williams syndrome. Neuronal fibers of normal controls (left) extend further than those of Williams syndrome patients (right). Picture shows diffusion tensor imaging data from each patient superimposed on anatomical MRI of the median patient. (Source: Karen Berman, M.D., NIMH Clinical Brain Disorders Branch)

Axon Game

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Evidence Builds That Meditation Strengthens the Brain

Earlier evidence out of UCLA suggested that meditating for years thickens the brain and strengthens the connections between brain cells. Now a direct correlation was found between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain's neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes.

Eileen Luders, Florian Kurth, Emeran A. Mayer, Arthur W. Toga, Katherine L. Narr, Christian Gaser. The Unique Brain Anatomy of Meditation Practitioners: Alterations in Cortical Gyrification. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2012

Regular exercise cures depression-like behavior...

Regular exercise cures depression-like behavior via VEGF-Flk-1 signaling in chronically stressed mice

Flu Drug Speeds Traumatic Brain Injury Recovery

A multi-national study published Feb. 29 in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed a significant breakthrough in the treatment of patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states. The study showed that the influenza medication amantadine hydrochloride accelerated the pace of functional recovery during active treatment in patients with post-traumatic disorders of consciousness. Multi-National Clinical Trial Shows Effectiveness of Amantadine in Treatment of Traumatic Brain Injury

Advertise on NYTimes.com Surgery for Epilepsy Gains Urgency in Trial

Researchers studied a group of 38 epilepsy patients, randomly assigning 15 to brain surgery and 23 to continued medical treatment. The surgery involves the removal of a piece of tissue about the size of a walnut from the temporal lobe, the part of the brain just above the ear. The surgery has been performed for many years, but the institution of high-resolution M.R.I. and microsurgical techniques have greatly improved its safety and efficacy.

...The patients in both groups were similar in age, duration of epilepsy, the number of antiepileptic drugs used and the number of seizures they had had. All had been taking drugs for one to two years without relief. The participants were seen at the study site every three months for two years after the start of the study. A group of specialists who did not know which patients had had surgery evaluated them for seizure type and severity as recorded in patient diaries. The study appears in the March 7 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

None of the 23 patients in the medication group and 11 of 15 in the surgical group were free of seizures during the second year of follow-up. Almost all of the surgical patients continued their drug regimen after their operations, which is the standard approach. After that point, if there are no seizures, patients can taper off the medicine...

Who Should Treat Stroke?

David Sacks, Journal of Neurointerventional Surgery: ...There is no question that acute stroke is a major health problem, with about 800 000 strokes per year in the USA alone. Most stroke victims do not have a good recovery. US stroke healthcare costs are $41 billion a year.[1] Dollar amounts do not capture the suffering of the patient, family and friends for the death, disability and loss of independence caused by strokes. There is again no question that strokes are best prevented, but 800 000 strokes a year creates a huge need for emergency stroke treatment, including by endovascular means...

The Bottom Line is Patient Care

IA stroke therapy is highly beneficial if performed well by adequately trained physicians on appropriately selected patients. Take away any one of these three elements and benefit may become harm. Not every hospital should offer an IA stroke program. It requires tremendous resources, organization and commitment. Institutional competency is as important as physician competency. There is general (although not uniform) agreement that IA stroke is underserved within communities—24×7×365 coverage requires additional manpower. A training curriculum, combined with mastery of training and documentation of satisfactory clinical outcomes compared with national benchmarks, will confirm the skill of the endovascular stroke physician. It is time to stop looking from the perspective of an individual specialty. Vascular surgeons, cardiologists, IR, interventional neuroradiologists, interventional neurologists and neurosurgeons treat carotid disease. Endoscopy is performed by gastroenterologists, general surgeons and colorectal surgeons. Vertebral augmentation is performed by IR, interventional neuroradiologists, orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons and anesthesiologists. IA stroke revascularization already is, and will continue to be, performed by physicians from multiple specialties. Our commitment needs to be focused on adequate training and confirmation of good outcomes.
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New MRI Reveals Mysteries of Brain Injuries

Understanding the brain on dance

How does the brain perceive and interpret beautiful movement? 

This is one of the key questions being asked by scientists at Bangor University who have enlisted the help of a professional dancer in their quest to better understand how our brains process movement and how we learn by observation.

Dr Emily Cross' research focuses on the relatively new field of science called neuroaesthetics which looks at how the brain perceives artistic endeavours.
 
Contemporary dancer Riley Watts was filmed dancing in a variety of settings, including a 3D motion-capture studio. He then underwent a functional MRI brain scan while simultaneously watching videos of himself dancing.
 
The pilot experiment will provide a window into what Mr Watts' brain is doing as he watches the videos of himself dancing.
The fMRI data will show what the professional dancer actually perceives when he sees himself moving in very complex ways; whether he is happy with that movement or not, and how his brain differentiates between the various different dancing contexts.

Think Like a Doctor: Doubled Over in Pain

The summary of a patient suffering from horrible abdominal pain that sent him to two different hospitals three times in two weeks.
Some of the laboratory reports and images ordered by the doctors who originally were faced with this medical mystery are provided.