In case you are unaware of video games, Zelda has a new adventure that is a but different from the rest and loads of fun!
Here is what I am reading today:
““This isn’t ready for application in the clinic yet, but as we get a better feel for where these and other hubs are found in the brain, they may factor into surgical decision-making,” said co-senior author Steven Petersen, PhD, the James S McDonnell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in Neurology. “The risks of surgeries to these sites could include significant impairment of attention, memory, language, speech and many other cognitive functions.””
“The researchers hope that this unifying theory, if validated, could offer new strategies for treating autism.
“At the moment, the treatments that have been developed are driven by the end symptoms. We’re suggesting that the deeper problem is a predictive impairment problem, so we should directly address that ability,” says Pawan Sinha, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences and the lead author of a paper describing the hypothesis in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.”
“Society for Neuroscience archival interview with American sleep researcher William C. Dement. He founded the Sleep Research Center, the world’s first sleep laboratory, at Stanford University. The interview took place July 21-22, 2004. This video is part of the Society for Neuroscience’s autobiography series, “The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography,” detailing the lives and discoveries of eminent senior neuroscientists.”
“”We have now shown that one way maternal inflammation could result in larger brains and, ultimately, autistic behavior, is through the activation of the neural stem cells that reside in the brain of all developing and adult mammals,” said Dr. Harley Kornblum, the paper’s senior author and a director of the Neural Stem Cell Research Center at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.”
“Blood-brain barrier (BBB) damaging during ischemia may induce devastating consequences like cerebral edema and hemorrhagic transformation. This study presents a novel strategy for dynamically imaging of BBB damaging with PEGylated supermagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) as contrast agents.”
7 Comments
cmc4 · October 19, 2014 at 8:24 pm
I found the article entitled “Damage to Brain ‘Hubs’ Causes Extensive Impairment” very interesting and informative. The authors talked about research being done on finding hubs in the brain where multiple networks come together and make it possible for different parts of the brain to work with each other. New advances in brain mapping have exposed these hubs and now doctors are researching the negative effects of damaging specific hubs as opposed to damaging a part of the brain that is far away from one of those hubs. Studies show that brain damage to one of the hubs caused significantly greater impairment of cognitive function than damage done farther away from one of those hubs. Which makes sense because the hubs are a collection of networks working together rather than just a single network. That does seem more like it would cause more issues if damaged. The article also mentioned that the knowledge of these hubs would lead doctors to have more strategic surgical decisions when doing brain surgeries because they’ll know to avoid those hubs if at all possible without causing more damage than there is. That is a great thing, because it can lead to less issues in the outcomes of surgeries. I think the research being done will further advance our knowledge of the cognitive functions of our brains and how damage can affect those functions.
mbrensel · October 22, 2014 at 8:42 am
I found the article,” A closer look at the blood-brain barrier” to be quite interesting. The technology that we have that allows us to see how the stained blood brain barrier responds to assault from different types of bacteria and fungi is quite remarkable. I knew capillaries were filled with lots of astrocytes but I was astounded when I read there there is estimated to be over 100,000 miles… WOW! Before reading this I never knew what rabies really was, I just knew to stay away from squirrels; but now I know that it affects the axon transport machinery around the blood brain barrier!
ksomasek · October 25, 2014 at 11:21 am
The article “Autism As A Disorder of Prediction” was a great read that opened up a completely new perspective to the disorder of Autism to me! The idea that the world is a “magical” phenomenon to Autistic individuals was a novel concept to me, but this reasoning now makes complete sense to me especially when relating it to the repetitive behavior seen in Autism. Non-autistic individuals also display similar anxiety when encountering unpredictable events or scenarios, so I can only imagine the continuous anxiety faced by Autistic individuals when every moment of their life is perceived as random. This theory in my opinion is highly credible and should definitely be focused on further to develop better tactics and strategies to treat and eventually cure Autism.
ksomasek · October 25, 2014 at 11:39 am
I read the article titled “Study finds link between neural stem cell
overgrowth and autism-like behavior in mice” and found it quite interesting how autism can be traced back to neural stem cell growth. Autism can therefore be highly affected by non-genetic factors which opens new doors to Autism etiology. I particularly liked how this article mentioned “the next step” to where the research is headed, which is one aspect that I have rarely seen in any article. I also think further research should be conducted on if it is possible to implement changes in the maternal stage to reduce the rapid excessive division of neural stem cells. I am not at all sure if such excessive division in Autism has any relevance or similarity to the excessive cell division seen in cancer and if combined research in both areas would be beneficial.
srvaldez · November 18, 2014 at 7:00 pm
I read the article “Damage to Brain ‘Hubs’ Causes Extensive Impairment” and it was extremely interesting. I never thought about the difference between a damaged part of the brain versus a damaged hub of the brain and the effects it has on the patient. The research seemed well-done, the researchers had a large database of patients and were able to find patients with similar symptoms and see that some of them overlapped in these brain hub injuries. Obviously we could not have random assignment in this study, but the researchers clearly took time to go through numerous, lengthy test for accurate results. From their research, they learned that damaging different hubs has a lot of variability in effects, but these scientists found one hub that seemed to be largely detrimental to the patients’ “real-world” capabilities. I am curious if these patients injuries were similarly obtained or if they had similar IQs, social skills, or other “real-world” abilities before the injuries to their brain hub. I would also like to know more about where this hub is located that they payed special attention to and which parts of the brain are communicating with each other on these hubs that’s causing such detrimental effects.
srvaldez · November 18, 2014 at 9:31 pm
I read the article “Autism as a Disorder of Prediction” which was about research on people with autism and their potential problems with predicting the future, which may cause some general anxiety. I had never known how important a controlled environment was to autistic people, but it is fascinating how consistent that trait seems to be across most people with autism. Living with hypersensitivity to environmental stimuli would be frightening to say the least, so I hope this research will help families with a member that has autism to be able to understand more of what autistic people experience and how to make the best environment for them. The more we can understand about one another, the better we can communicate and help each other out. I’m also fascinated by the behavioral aspect of this and wonder if, based off more research, there could be a way to work on certain medications and socialization of young children with autism in a way to improve their social behavior and potentially reduce their hypersensitivity to the environment.
camandrew · November 23, 2014 at 11:21 pm
I read the article “Action video games bolster sensorimotor skills, study finds,” which was pretty refreshing to read about. Growing up i loved to play video games but my parents discouraged it, always claiming that it “rots my brain.” Well, now i can show them this study and say claim that it helps me learn sensorimotor skills faster then the average person. Heck, maybe i’ll start playing video games again. Anything to help the learning process!