In low- and middle-income countries, mild cognitive impairmentan intermediate state between normal signs of cognitive aging, such as becoming increasingly forgetful, and dementia, which may or may not progressis consistently associated with higher disability and with neuropsychiatric symptoms but not with most socio-demographic factors, according to a large study published in this week’s PLoS Medicine.
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CD97 gene expression and function correlate with WT1 protein expression and glioma invasiveness
Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center’s VCU Massey Cancer Center and Harold F. Young Neurosurgical Center (Richmond, VA) and Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA) have discovered that suppression of Wilms tumor 1 protein (WT1) results in downregulation of CD97 gene expression in three glioblastoma cell lines and reduces the characteristic invasiveness exhibited by glial tumor cells. This finding is announced in the article, “Novel report of expression and function of CD97 in malignant gliomas: correlation with Wilms tumor 1 expression and glioma cell invasiveness,” by Archana Chidambaram, Ph.D., and colleagues, published online ahead of print today in the Journal of Neurosurgery. Although further studies must be performed, the authors propose that CD97 may prove to be a new target for anti-glioma therapies.
My connectome, myself
The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each of which is connected to many others. Neuroscientists believe these connections hold the key to our memories, personality and even mental disorders such as schizophrenia. By unraveling them, we may be able to learn more about how we become our unique selves, and possibly even how to alter those selves.
Who will benefit from stroke drug? New score can help decide
A new scoring method can help doctors quickly decide which stroke patients will respond well to the clot-busting drug alteplase, according to a study published in the February 7, 2012, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Research team takes new approach to studying differences between human and monkey brains
(Medical Xpress) — In order to provide more insight into how human and monkey brains are similar and how they’re different, a research team has taken a different approach to studying both to find out which parts of the brains of each respond in similar ways, and which, if any, differ, when exposed to a shared experience. In this case, the team, as they describe in their paper published in Nature Methods, describe how they exposed groups of humans and monkeys to the same section of a Hollywood movie, while monitoring them via fMRI and found some brain areas responded in both groups as expected, while others were a complete surprise.