A joint study by the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) and Singapore General Hospital (SGH) has revealed that patients who have been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease might actually have NIID instead.
NIID is a disabling neurodegenerative condition due to a gene mutation and has no effective treatment. Symptoms of NIID include dementia, Parkinsonism, poor balance, as well as numbness and weakness in the limbs.
A patient with NIID may or may not experience symptoms, depending on age and stage of disease. The severe form of NIID is usually seen in older patients, where the disease has progressed to an advanced stage.
Researchers at the University of East Anglia and Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) are launching a new project to improve the lives of dementia carers in the UK.
They will work with carers and healthcare workers to co-develop and test a new ‘Carecoach’ support package – backed by £2 million in funding from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
The aim of the blended care initiative is to help dementia carers stay emotionally and physically well – which is crucial for both the carer and the person they support and care for.
Stem and progenitor cells exhibit diversity in early brain development that likely contributes to later neural complexity in the adult cerebral cortex, a study suggests.
Researchers from the Center for Neuroscience Research (CNR) at Children's National Hospital say this research expands on existing ideas about brain development, and could significantly impact the clinical care of neurodevelopment diseases in the future. the study was done in collaboration with a research team at Yale University led by Nenad Sestani.
A new US study is investigating the higher rate of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) among black and Latino individuals.
APOE-ε4 is the strongest known genetic risk factor for ADRD , however this finding is largely based on studies of individuals of European descent.
To better understand the association of the APOE gene with cognitive decline in Latinx populations, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and collaborators analysed metrics of cognitive decline in six diverse Latino populations: those of Cuban, Central American, Dominican, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and South American backgrounds.
They found that the APOE-ε4 genetic variant was associated with risk of cognitive decline in Latino populations, with the strongest effect among those of Cuban backgrounds.
One of the main natural components of ayahuasca tea is dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which promotes neurogenesis - the formation of new neurons - according to research led by the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
In addition to neurons, the infusion used for shamanic purposes also induces the formation of other neural cells such as astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.
"This capacity to modulate brain plasticity suggests that it has great therapeutic potential for a wide range of psychiatric and neurological disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases", researchers say.
The study, published in Translational Psychiatry, a Nature Research journal, reports the results of four years of in vitro and in vivo experimentation on mice, demonstrating that these exhibit "a greater cognitive capacity when treated with this substance".
Phantom-limb pain is as mysterious as its name implies. The vast majority of amputees experience "phantom-limb" sensations that make them feel their missing limb is still part of their body. The cause is still unknown, and 50% to 80% of the cases, the sensations are painful. With no established treatments or medication, phantom-limb pain can have a large impact on the quality of life and recovery for amputees.
Although the cause is unknown, one theory is that it happens when areas of the brain that used to control the amputated limb remain strongly connected to the mental image of the limb. To weaken this connection, one idea is to train the brain regions that control the intact limb to also control the phantom limb.
Humans are born with a part of the brain that is prewired to be receptive to seeing words and letters, setting the stage at birth for people to learn how to read, a new study suggests.
Analysing brain scans of newborns, researchers found that this part of the brain - called the "visual word form area" (VWFA) - is connected to the language network of the brain.
"That makes it fertile ground to develop a sensitivity to visual words - even before any exposure to language," said Zeynep Saygin, senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.
Has your partner experienced a brain injury of any kind? Do you and your partner have one or more children aged between 7 and 17?
If so, your input could be hugely valuable to a new research project.
Research shows that following a brain injury, family members may go through a period of grieving and loss, and children can experience emotional and behavioural changes.
Over-activity in a single brain region called the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) underlies several key symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders, but an antidepressant only successfully treats some of the symptoms. A new study suggests that sgACC is a crucial region in depression and anxiety, and targeted treatment based on a patient’s symptoms could lead to better outcomes.
Depression is a debilitating disorder affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide, but people experience it differently. Some mainly have symptoms of elevated negative emotion like guilt and anxiety; some have a loss of ability to experience pleasure (called anhedonia); and others a mix of the two.
We all know that moment when we're in the car, at a concert or even sitting on our sofa and one of our favourite songs is played. It's the one that has that really good chord in it, flooding your system with pleasurable emotions, joyful memories, making your hair stand on edge, and even sending a shiver or "chill" down your spine.
About half of people get chills when listening to music. Neuroscientists based in France have now used EEG to link chills to multiple brain regions involved in activating reward and pleasure systems. The results are published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
Thibault Chabin and colleagues at the Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté in Besançon EEG-scanned the brains of 18 French participants who regularly experience chills when listening to their favourite musical pieces. In a questionnaire, they were asked to indicate when they experienced chills, and rate their degree of pleasure from them.
