Featured series 
Tag: Neurology
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Health
Trial Turns Over New Leaf for Traditional Herb
If a painting’s worth were measured by the money it fetched, van Gogh’s famous rendering of his friend and physician Dr. Gachet would be among the most valuable in all of art. “Portrait of Dr. Gachet”—which depicts a languid man holding a purple foxglove, the plant from which the drug digitalis is derived—was sold in…
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Campus & Community
Newsmakers
Khoshbins named interim Currier House masters Shah and Laura Khoshbin were recently named interim masters of Currier House for the 2007-08 academic year.
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Health
Finding the start of Alzheimer’s disease
Faces are hard to remember. Even harder are the names that go with them. It’s one of the most common problems people face as they get older. In puzzling over why that is, Reisa Sperling and her colleagues at Harvard Medical School have discovered startling things about how memories are made and why people lose…
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Campus & Community
‘Face-blindness’ disorder may not be so rare
Researchers at Harvard University and University College London have developed diagnostic tests for prosopagnosia, a socially disabling inability to recognize or distinguish faces. They’ve already used the new test and a related Web site (http://www.faceblind.org) to identify hundreds of “face-blind” individuals, far more than scientists had identified previously. The researchers, led by Ken Nakayama and…
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Campus & Community
HMS researchers isolate nerve growth compound
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston have isolated a molecule that stimulates the regrowth of damaged adult nerve fibers, providing new hope for those suffering from nerve damage and from neurodegenerative diseases. Adult nerve fibers in the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerve – all parts of the central nervous system –…
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Health
Researchers learn more about ways to regenerate the ear’s hearing cells
Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have made important progress in their ongoing effort to regenerate the inner ear’s hair cells, which convert sound vibrations to nerve impulses. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they report successfully creating a mouse model that allows them to build on earlier findings about the effect of deactivating…
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Health
Attention shoppers: Researchers find neurons that encode the value of different goods
Researchers at Harvard Medical School report in the April 23, 2006 issue of Nature that they have identified neurons that encode the values that subjects assign to different items. The activity of these neurons might facilitate the process of decision-making that occurs when someone chooses between different goods. “We have long known that different neurons…
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Health
Ancient molecules guide new synapse growth
Recent research has shifted the understanding of a group of specialized molecules in the extracellular matrix, recasting them from scaffolding only to key cue-providers that help guide the formation of the nervous system. The findings are reported in the Feb. 16, 2006 Neuron by Misao Higashi, April Duckworth, Aurnab Ghose, Thomas Schwarz, Alan Tenney, David…
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Health
RNA sequence restrains fatal encephalitis
One short sequence of RNA protected mice from deadly brain inflammation caused by West Nile virus and Japanese encephalitis virus, report Priti Kumar, Manjunath Swamy, and Premlata Shankar. The findings, which appear online and in the April 2006 PLoS Medicine, underscore the therapeutic potential of the fast-moving field of RNA interference. It has only been…
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Health
Protein underlies brain’s response to activity
Experience helps shape the brain, but how that happens – how synapses are remodeled in response to activity – is one of neurobiology’s biggest mysteries. Though axons and dendrites can be easily spotted waxing and waning under the microscope, the molecular middlemen working inside the cell to shape the neuron’s sinewy processes have been much…
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Campus & Community
Rituals enhance health
American Indians who use the hallucinogen peyote regularly in connection with religious ceremonies show no evidence of brain damage or psychological problems, report researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital. In fact, members of the Navajo tribe who regularly use peyote actually scored significantly better on several measures of overall mental health than did subjects from the…
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Health
New findings help explain how brain pathways control body weight
A study led by a scientific team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center provides another important step in our understanding of the critical role that the brain’s molecular pathways play in the development of obesity and related disorders. The findings, reported in the Nov. 4, 2005 issue of the journal Cell, demonstrate for the first…
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Health
Brain injury reversed in animal model of AIDS
Depending on the circumstances, missing N-acetylaspartate (NAA) in the brain may indicate Alzheimer’s disease, ischemic stroke, a brain tumor, or traumatic injury. And, as doctors soon learned with the AIDS epidemic, NAA levels drop in tandem with the neurological deterioration that further cripples people with HIV. Yet Gilberto Gonzalez was unprepared for the precipitous fall…
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Campus & Community
Magnetic stimulation helps stroke victims
Felipe Fregni, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School, has used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to improve the movement skills of people whose brains have been damaged by strokes, skills that include everything from writing to putting on your pants. When someone moves his or her right hand, the brain sends signals that inhibit movement of…
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Health
Size of brain structure could signal vulnerability to anxiety disorders
Individuals respond with physical and emotional distress to situations that recall traumatic memories. Such responses usually diminish gradually, as those situations are repeated without unpleasant occurrences; this is called “extinction memory.” But some people continue to respond fearfully and develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Studies in animals have suggested that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)…
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Health
Fetal-cell transplants reverse Parkinson’s in two patients
The two patients were part of a small exploratory study in Halifax. In the study, the cells were bathed in the trophic factor GDNF before being implanted into the striatum, the target of dopamine-producing cells. One patient also had cells implanted into the substantia nigra, the origin of the dopamine neurons involved in Parkinson’s. The…
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Health
Magnetic stimulation may improve stroke recovery
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment improved motor function in a small group of people. For the stimulation, an insulated wire coil is placed on the scalp, and an electrical current is passed through the coil, creating a magnetic pulse that stimulates the cortex. The study involved 14 people, ages 35 to 63, eight of whom…
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Health
Left- or right-brain? Genes may tell the story
According to HHMI investigator Christopher A. Walsh, postdoctoral fellow Tao Sun, and their colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, their discovery that a gene called LM04 is expressed differently on the two sides of the brain may help understand how one side of the brain is dominant in most people.…
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Brain chemical serotonin involved in early embryo patterning
A study published in the May 10, 2005, Current Biology has ramifications for neuroscience, developmental genetics, evolutionary biology and, possibly, human teratology (a branch of pathology and embryology concerned with abnormal development and congenital malformations). Among other results, the study, which was carried on frog and chick embryos: • Provides the first molecular support for…
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Health
T cell misfits may spell autoimmunity
For a would-be T cell, the journey from cradle to grave is likely to be brief. After leaving the bone marrow, the immature immune cell travels directly to the thymus, where it undergoes a winnowing process. To become a mature T cell, it must learn to attack alien proteins and not those peptides produced by…
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Campus & Community
Physical activity linked to protection from Parkinson’s disease
In the first comprehensive examination of strenuous physical activity and the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have found that men who exercised regularly and vigorously early in their adult life had a lower risk for developing Parkinson’s disease compared with men who did not. The findings…
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Campus & Community
New drug eases effects of Parkinson’s disease
A successful test of a new drug indicates that it can improve life for those with moderate and advanced Parkinson’s disease. Called rasagiline, the medication promises to reduce the time when other drugs are least effective and symptoms of tremors, stiffness, and impaired movement are at their worst, researchers report. “It made life easier and…
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Health
Anti-psychotic drugs may be associated with increased risk of diabetes in schizophrenia patients
According to the article’s background information, “Recently, the newer ‘atypical’ antipsychotic agents have been linked to several forms of morbidity, including obesity; hyperlipidemia; type 2 diabetes mellitus; and diabetic ketoacidosis [a severe complication of diabetes].” David C. Henderson, M.D., from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues evaluated 36 non-obese outpatients with schizophrenia…
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Health
Walking improves cognitive functions in older women
In a study, elderly women who engaged in the most activity — for example, walking at least 6 hours per week — had a 20 percent decrease in risk of cognitive impairment compared to those who were inactive. they also demonstrated the cognitive functioning of someone three-years younger than their actual age. The findings were…
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Campus & Community
Probing inappropriate rage
As 30 research subjects seethed, scientists measured blood flowing between the thinking and emotional parts of their brains. What would be the difference between people who controlled their anger pretty well, and those who could not handle it in a socially acceptable way? These were the first such brain scans ever done with mental patients…
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Health
Which comes first, language or thought?
“Infants are born with a language-independent system for thinking about objects,” says Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard. “These concepts give meaning to the words they learn later.” Because languages differ in how they approach objects, many scientists suspected that children must learn the relevant concepts as they learn their language. That’s wrong,…
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Health
MRI scan shows promise in treating bipolar disorder
A study published in the Jan. 1, 2004 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry had a surprising start. As Michael Rohan, imaging physicist in McLean Hospital’s Brain Imaging Center, explains, “We were using MRI to investigate the effectiveness of certain medications in bipolar patients and noticed that many came out of the MRI feeling…
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Campus & Community
New stage of memory found
It’s been known for a while that sleep helps consolidate certain memories; that’s probably a major purpose of sleep. But the latest experiments by Harvard Medical School researchers show that a good night’s rest can enhance your performance as much as 20-30 percent. Not all memories, just those of motor skills such as riding a…
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Health
Compound traces brain plaques in real time
Alzheimer’s disease is notoriously difficult to diagnose. Though sophisticated functional and cognitive tests can help, they often fail to distinguish between Alzheimer’s and other non-amyloid-based dementias, particularly frontotemporal dementia. The ability to measure plaques in vivo would not only provide clinicians with an immediate and reliable diagnosis, but over time would allow them to gauge…
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Campus & Community
What can monks teach scientists?
People tested by Harvard Psychology Professor Stephen Kosslyn and his colleagues have found it difficult to hold a simple image in their minds for more than 10 seconds. However, Buddhists who excel at mental imagery claim that they can hold vivid three-dimensional images of complex objects, like a palace or deity, in their minds for…