Research at the University of Calgary’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI) has demonstrated the novel expression of an ion channel in Purkinje cells specialized neurons in the cerebellum, the area of the brain responsible for movement. Ray W. Turner, PhD, Professor in the Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy and PhD student Jordan Engbers and colleagues published this finding in the January edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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Study shows vision is necessary for spatial awareness tasks
(Medical Xpress) — People who lose their sight at a later stage in life have a greater spatial awareness than if they were born blind, according to scientists at Queen Mary, University of London.
Friendly to a fault, yet tense: Personality traits traced in brain
A personality profile marked by overly gregarious yet anxious behavior is rooted in abnormal development of a circuit hub buried deep in the front center of the brain, say scientists at the National Institutes of Health. They used three different types of brain imaging to pinpoint the suspect brain area in people with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder characterized by these behaviors. Matching the scans to scores on a personality rating scale revealed that the more an individual with Williams syndrome showed these personality/temperament traits, the more abnormalities there were in the brain structure, called the insula.
Newborn screening for DMD shows promise as an international model
Investigators at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, working with the DNA Sequencing Core Facility at the University of Utah, have developed an approach to newborn screening (NBS) for the life-threatening genetic disorder, Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and potentially other muscular dystrophies. As a model for NBS, the approach published online in January in the Annals of Neurology provides evidence that this approach could be implemented if approved by regulatory bodies at a state level or alternatively through the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children.
Clinical trial examines antioxidant effects for Alzheimer’s disease on cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers
An antioxidant combination of vitamin E, vitamin C and α-lipoic acid (E/C/ALA) was not associated with changes in some cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers related to Alzheimer disease in a randomized controlled trial, according to a study published Online First by Archives of Neurology.