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IMAGE: Parkinson s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by the loss of dopaminergic neurons and characterized by motor signs including bradykinesia, rigidity, resting tremor, and reduced postural reflex. More than. view more
Credit: Masahisa Katsuno
A research team led by Nagoya University in Japan has found that blood pressure, the hematocrit (the percentage of red blood cells in blood), and serum cholesterol levels change in patients with Parkinson s disease long before the onset of motor symptoms. This finding, which was recently published online in
Scientific Reports, may pave the way for early diagnosis and treatment of the disease.
Our brains consist of soft matter bathed in watery cerebrospinal fluid inside a hard skull, and in Physics of Fluids, researchers describe studying another system with the same features, an egg, to search for answers about concussions. Considering that in most concussive brain injuries, the skull does not break, they wanted to find out if it was possible to break or deform the egg yolk without breaking the eggshell.
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IMAGE: Regions showing enhanced activation during the maintenance of self-associated stimluli (left), including both classic self-referential processing regions (VMPFC) and regions in the working memory network. view more
Credit: Yin et al., JNeurosci 2021
A brain region involved in processing information about ourselves biases our ability to remember, according to new research published in
JNeurosci.
People are good at noticing information about themselves, like when your eye jumps to your name in a long list or you manage to hear someone address you in a noisy crowd. This self-bias extends to working memory, the ability to actively think about and manipulate bits of information: people are also better at remembering things about themselves.
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Targeted neuromodulation tailored to individual patients distinctive symptoms is an increasingly common way of correcting misfiring brain circuits in people with epilepsy or Parkinson s disease. Now, scientists at UC San Francisco s Dolby Family Center for Mood Disorders have demonstrated a novel personalized neuromodulation approach that at least in one patient was able to provide relief from symptoms of severe treatment-resistant depression within minutes.
The approach is being developed specifically as a potential treatment for the significant fraction of people with debilitating depression who do not respond to existing therapies and are at high risk of suicide. The brain, like the heart, is an electrical organ, and there is a growing acceptance in the field that the faulty brain networks that cause depression just like epilepsy or Parkinson s disease could be shifted into a healthier state by targeted stimulation, said Katherine Scangos, MD, PhD, an assist