Clinicians & therapists

Gene therapy can effectively treat various diseases, but for some debilitating conditions like muscular dystrophies there is a big problem: size. The genes that are dysfunctional in muscular dystrophies are often extremely large, and current delivery methods can’t courier such substantial genetic loads into the body. A new technology, dubbed “StitchR,” surmounts this obstacle by [...]

Scientists have known for decades that the classic symptoms of schizophrenia, such as jumping to conclusions or difficulty adjusting to new information, can be attributed to poor communication between the cerebral cortex and the thalamus, known as the brain’s central switchboard. By measuring brain cell activity between these two regions as volunteers completed ambiguous tasks, a [...]

New research from the University of Arkansas found that school suspensions and expulsions can lead to higher rates of depression through adolescence and into early adulthood.  The findings were published in the latest issue of Advances in Life Course Research. The study provides empirical evidence for previous suggestions by scholars that school suspensions and expulsions [...]

New laws will give patients sectioned under the Mental Health Act more dignity and say over their care in long-awaited updates to be introduced in Parliament today (Wednesday, 6 November). Currently, outdated laws do not meet modern standards and fail to give patients an adequate voice. For example, individuals experiencing severe mental illness can be [...]

While many people believe that poor sleep during pregnancy is inevitable, new research has determined that cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTi) while pregnant can not only improve sleep patterns but also address postpartum depression. Researchers from UBC’s Okanagan and Vancouver campuses, as well as the University of Calgary, discovered that delivering CBTi during pregnancy [...]

Researchers at UCLA Health have found that a person's risk of developing psychotic-like experiences may be influenced by both childhood attention problems and their genetic makeup.  The findings, published in Nature Mental Health, build upon a long-studied association between childhood attention problems and the likelihood of later developing schizophrenia. Using data from about 10,000 children [...]

A new study has revealed the mechanism behind two seemingly contradictory effects of fear memories: the inability to forget yet the difficulty to recall. Led by researchers from Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, and the University of Tokyo, the study shows how fear experiences are initially remembered as broad, associative memories, [...]

The future of neurological disease treatment could be shaped by a new "brain-blood-immune" interface which brings together immunologists, neuroscientists, haematologists, geneticists, computer scientists, physicists, bioengineers, drug developers, and clinical researchers. That is according to an expert commentary report published in the journal Cell, which seeks to address the fact that the cause of complex neurological [...]

Everyone snores occasionally, but for some, snoring can indicate a more serious issue: sleep disordered breathing. This refers to a range of sleep-related respiratory conditions that include obstructive sleep apnoea, which is estimated to affect a billion people worldwide. One common treatment is positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy, which involves sleeping patients wearing a mask [...]

Gene therapy has emerged as a potential long-term treatment for CALD, a devastating, rare brain disease which causes loss of neurological function and ultimately an early death in children. CALD (cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy) is a progressive, genetic brain disease that primarily presents in young boys. Researchers have found that six years after treatment with the first [...]