NIH outlines global research agenda to tackle brain disorders–from cognitive impairments to depression and dementia

Heads-up: There’s an excellent–and open-access– research sup­ple­ment in Nature, result of an NIH-led effort to advance the glob­al brain dis­or­ders research agen­da.

Descrip­tion: Infants are starved of oxy­gen dur­ing dif­fi­cult births. Children’s cog­ni­tive func­tion is per­ma­nent­ly dam­aged due to mal­nu­tri­tion or expo­sure to infec­tions or tox­ins. Adults suf­fer from crip­pling depres­sion or demen­tia. The breadth and com­plex­i­ty of these and oth­er brain and ner­vous sys­tem dis­or­ders make them some of the most dif­fi­cult con­di­tions to diag­nose and treat, espe­cial­ly in the devel­op­ing world, where there are few resources. An NIH-led col­lab­o­ra­tion has stud­ied these com­plex issues that occur across the lifes­pan and today pub­lished a sup­ple­ment to the jour­nal Nature that lays out a research strat­e­gy to address them.

“We may be at a tip­ping point for research relat­ed to glob­al brain dis­or­ders,” accord­ing to an intro­duc­to­ry arti­cle authored by co-edi­tors Dr. Don­ald Sil­ber­berg, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, Philadel­phia, and Dr. Rajesh Kalar­ia, of New­cas­tle Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed King­dom. “Over the past few decades, excit­ing basic sci­ence dis­cov­er­ies have been made, effec­tive inter­ven­tions have been devel­oped and advances in tech­nol­o­gy have set the stage for a research agen­da that can lead to unprece­dent­ed progress in this field.”

–> The jour­nal sup­ple­ment is open-access and avail­able HERE

To Learn More:

• The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age