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Category: biotech/medical – Page 489

With depression affecting around 1 in 10 of us at some point during our lives, the need for new and improved treatments is a top priority for researchers – and it appears that spinal cord stimulation could be one route for experts to investigate.

A team led by researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine devised a pilot clinical trial in which a little black box was placed on the spinal cord of 20 volunteers with depression, with one electrode on the back and one on the right shoulder.

The box then delivered a specially customized, low-level electric buzz to half of the volunteers, for three sessions per week over eight weeks. This was shown to have a greater effect on depressive symptoms than the different, ‘placebo’ charge administered to the other half of the volunteers.

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Discovery could be useful in developing new therapies for multiple sclerosis, neurodegenerative conditions, and brain cancer.

New research from Oregon Health & Science University for the first time reveals the function of a little-understood junction between cells in the brain that could have important treatment implications for conditions ranging from multiple sclerosis to Alzheimer’s disease, to a type of brain cancer known as glioma.

The study will be published today (January 12) in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

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Department of Energy user facility helps probe questions from changes in the structure of nuclei to nuclear reactions that shape the Universe.

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) enables discoveries in the science of atomic nuclei, their role in the cosmos, and the fundamental symmetries of nature. This accelerator facility uses beams of short-lived nuclei not available elsewhere. Results from FRIB address questions such as the limits of the nuclear chart, the origin of the elements, and the reason for why there is more matter than antimatter in our Universe.

In FRIB’s first year, its measurements tackled the changes in the structure of the shortest-lived nuclei, exotic decay modes, nuclear reactions that affect cosmic events such as X-ray bursts, and processes in the crusts of neutron stars.

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Stanford Medicine scientists used transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily enhance hypnotizability in patients with chronic pain, making them better candidates for hypnotherapy.

How deeply someone can be hypnotized — known as hypnotizability — appears to be a stable trait that changes little throughout adulthood, much like personality and IQ. But now, for the first time, Stanford Medicine researchers have demonstrated a way to temporarily heighten hypnotizablity — potentially allowing more people to access the benefits of hypnosis-based therapy.

In the new study, published on January 4 in Nature Mental Health, the researchers found that less than two minutes of electrical stimulation targeting a precise area of the brain could boost participants’ hypnotizability for about one hour.

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When learning, patients with schizophrenia or depression have difficulty making optimal use of information that is new to them. In the learning process, both groups of patients give greater weight to less important information and, as a result, make less than ideal decisions.

This was the finding of a several-months-long study conducted by a team led by neuroscientist Professor Dr. med. Markus Ullsperger from the Institute of Psychology at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg in collaboration with colleagues from the University Clinic for Psychiatry & Psychotherapy and the German Center for Mental Health.

By using electroencephalography (EEG) and complex mathematical computer modeling, the team of researchers discovered that learning deficits in depressive and schizophrenic are caused by diminished/reduced flexibility in the use of new information.

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A 26-year-old man with a 1-week history of a rash on his hands and feet and fever had scattered, partially blanchable macules that had merged into erythematous patches on his hands and feet. Read the full clinical case from มหาวิทยาลัยเชียงใหม่ Chiang Mai University:

Images in Clinical Medicine from The New England Journal of Medicine — Papular–Purpuric “Gloves and Socks” Syndrome in Parvovirus B19 Infection.

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An international scientific team including more than 40 authors from seven different countries, led by a researcher at the University of Malaga Juan Pascual Anaya, has managed to sequence the first genome of the myxini, also known as hagfish, the only large group of vertebrates for which there has been no reference genome of any of its species yet.

This finding, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, has allowed for deciphering the evolutionary history of duplications that occurred in the ancestors of vertebrates, a group that includes humans.

“This study has important implications in the evolutionary and molecular field, as it helps us understand the changes in the genome that accompanied the origin of vertebrates and their most unique structures, such as the complex brain, the jaw and the limbs,” explains the scientist of the Department of Animal Biology of the UMA Pascual Anaya, who has coordinated the research.

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