Using advanced brain imaging techniques, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have watched how humans use both lower and higher brain processes to learn novel tasks, an advance they say may help speed up the teaching of new skills as well as offer strategies to retrain people with perceptual deficits due to autism.
A new study reported that zolpidem, a drug normally used to treat insomnia, temporarily improved brain function in a patient suffering from akinetic mutism, a condition in which the person is alert but cannot speak or move.
Scientists at University College London and Imperial College London have shown how the brain makes sense of speech in a noisy environment, such as a pub or in a crowd. The research suggests that various regions of the brain work together to make sense of what it hears, but that when the speech is completely incomprehensible, the brain appears to give up trying.
Researchers at Yale and at Johns Hopkins, led by Barry Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of Therapeutic Cognitive Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins, have found that a simple blood test to measure uric acid, a measure of kidney function, might reveal a risk factor for cognitive problems and dementia in old age.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine have discovered that common inhaled anesthetics increase the number of amyloid plaques in the brains of animals, which might accelerate the onset of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
When it comes to health care for our kids, we live in a hardscrabble world that is only going to get tougher. That is the underlying message from three UCLA professors who are calling for a complete overhaul of the U.S child health care system, which they describe as a “patchwork of disconnected programs, policies and funding” that lacks “clear accountability or performance goals.”
Speaking on the occasion of inaugural programme of International Women’s Day and the seminar on “Mentally Ill Women – is Destitution the only Answer?” in New Delhi, the Indian Minister for Health & Family Welfare, Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss said that mentally ill women face formidable socio-economic problems such as neglect by family and society, dislocation, abandonment and are vulnerable as easy targets of sexual abuse.
As states across the country contemplate health insurance coverage expansions and other changes to publicly-funded programs, a new Commonwealth Fund study cautions states to pay critical attention to meeting the health needs of children.
Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN) announced that it presented additional results of its completed Phase 2 follow-on study of Flurizan? in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease at the annual meeting of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP), held March 1-4, 2007 in New Orleans.
Inadequate intellectual stimulation and poor nutrition, especially iodine and iron deficiencies, are likely to blame for hindering more than 200 million children in developing countries from meeting their full potential, says a Purdue University researcher.