brain-disease

Trend: Rethinking (and treating) chronic pain as a brain disease

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Can stim­u­lat­ing the brain treat chron­ic pain? (Sci­ence Daily):

“We’ve pub­lished numer­ous brain stim­u­la­tion papers over sev­er­al years, and we always learn some­thing impor­tant,” said senior author Flavio Frohlich, PhD, direc­tor of the Car­oli­na Cen­ter for Neu­rostim­u­la­tion and asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try. “But this is the first time we’ve stud­ied chron­ic pain, and this is the only time all three ele­ments of a study lined up per­fect­ly. We suc­cess­ful­ly tar­get­ed a spe­cif­ic brain region, we enhanced or restored that region’s activ­i­ty, and we cor­re­lat­ed that enhance­ment with a sig­nif­i­cant decrease in symp­toms” Keep on reading

Update: 25 Key References to Navigate the Brain Health and Neurotechnology Revolution

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holdingbrain
Time for Sharp­Brains’ Novem­ber e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing 25 of the key ref­er­ence mate­ri­als that par­tic­i­pants at the 2015 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit found most intrigu­ing, in order of dis­cus­sion dur­ing the Sum­mit. Our deep­est grat­i­tude goes to Sum­mit Speak­ers, Spon­sors, and every­one who par­tic­i­pat­ed in our best con­fer­ence to date!

If you reg­is­tered to par­tic­i­pate at the 2015 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, you can access all ses­sion record­ings Here. If you did­n’t reg­is­ter, you can pur­chase access here.
2015SummitSpeakers_2

Accelerating brain health research via online registries

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InternetSan Fran­cis­co-based online ‘brain reg­istry’ seeks vol­un­teers to trans­form research (San Jose Mer­cury News):

“By vol­un­teer­ing — repeat­ed­ly over time — par­tic­i­pants join a pool of research sub­jects in the new Brain Health Reg­istry, opened Tues­day, for stud­ies on brain dis­eases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkin­son’s, as well as depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er neu­ro­log­i­cal ail­ments. [Read more…] about Accel­er­at­ing brain health research via online registries

Alzheimer’s Disease: Treatment Directions

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Last year, Jef­frey Gonce, a Psy­chol­o­gy teacher at Red Land High School (West Shore School Dis­trict, PA) asked his stu­dents to “com­plete a project describ­ing a recent brain (or genet­ic) study that affects behav­ior.” The stu­dents could opt to post their arti­cles online, and Jef­frey was kind enough to send us a link to read the results. We enjoyed read­ing them all, and pub­lished in our blog this beau­ti­ful essay, titled “Tis bet­ter to give than receive”, writ­ten by Alexan­dra, which  was sub­se­quent­ly includ­ed in a num­ber of neu­ro­science an psy­chol­o­gy blogs. Ear­li­er this year we high­light­ed this piece on Musi­cal train­ing as men­tal exer­cise for cog­ni­tive per­for­mance, writ­ten by Megan.

This quar­ter, Jef­frey also sent us his stu­dents’ essays, and we are going to rec­og­nize and pub­lish this great essay by high school stu­dent Kristin H.

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Alzheimer’s Dis­ease

– By Kristin H.

Alzheimer’s is a dis­ease which caus­es peo­ple, gen­er­al­ly of an old­er age, to lose mem­o­ry and for­get how to accom­plish sim­ple tasks. Demen­tia is the dis­ease which Alzheimer’s is a part and about four mil­lion Amer­i­cans were diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s in 1999, a num­ber which is expect­ed to grow (Alt­man 8–9). Demen­tia is an unspe­cif­ic brain dis­ease com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with mem­o­ry loss and anoth­er seri­ous brain dys­func­tion. Demen­tia is an incur­able dis­ease (“Demen­tia”). A new drug treat­ment that replaces the enzyme miss­ing in an Alzheimer’s brain may be able to cure Alzheimer’s dis­ease in it’s late stages (Cogh­lan).

[Read more…] about Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: Treat­ment Directions