Each year, nearly ninety thousand children are born extremely premature in the United States – that is, before 28 weeks gestation. Most of them survive, but about half the survivors suffer from severe health problems throughout their childhood and into adulthood, including learning and behavioral disorders such as ADHD. “Treatment options are clearly urgently required to prevent the brain damage and associated memory deficits that follow...
Read More
When it comes to health, kidneys are critical. From regulating blood composition to maintaining calcium levels, the pair of bean-shaped organs perform several essential tasks. Needless to say, interruption to kidney function can be disastrous. Working with scientists in South Korea, researchers at the University of Virginia found a surprisingly simple treatment for renal ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) in mice, which is a model of acute kidney...
Read More
The placenta delivers nutrients from a mother's blood to a developing fetus. It also produces hormones that help the baby grow during its forty or so weeks in utero. But the placenta's powerhouse abilities don't end there. The organ provides a wealth of information about the infant's future health, allowing doctors to make predictions about whether or not the child will develop autism or, later...
Read More
If one area isn't working, another part can step in. Plasticity is one of the brain's most beautiful attributes. Recent research has documented the organ's ability to compensate in the face of damage, and now a new study identifies a key region for compensation when the damage occurs in the hippocampus. The region is the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). It's an integral part of the hippocampal-prefrontal-amygdala...
Read More
Obstetricians and midwifes have long hailed the benefits of folic acid during pregnancy. Now new research offers evidence that choline is another important nutrient for the developing fetus. Found in foods like eggs and cauliflower, choline is known to aid healthy liver function. But in the past few years, studies have shown that the nutrient also plays a role in brain development. One recent study...
Read More
According to scientists at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute in Calgary, Canada, there is evidence for increased neurogenesis in adult mice reared by two parents. Their study also describes other interesting findings, such as the fact that increased neurogenesis persists in the next generation, or that the effects of differences in rearing affect males and females differently. Using Stereo Investigator to perform a stereological assessment of proliferating cells...
Read More
Researchers at the Waisman Center (University of Wisconsin-Madison) just took a big step in their quest to develop regenerative medicines for treating Parkinson's, Alzheimer’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases. They used human embryonic stem cells to restore memory and learning in disabled mice. The study, published last month in Nature Biotechnology, "is the first to show that human stem cells can successfully implant themselves in the brain...
Read More
Spinal cord injuries can result in a range of physical disabilities from slight loss of motor function to major paralysis, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying the damage. Scientists affiliated with the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at the University of Miami are gaining knowledge about how the nervous system responds to spinal cord injuries. Their latest study, published last month in the...
Read More
A stroke patient is rushed to the hospital. Deprived of oxygen-rich blood, brain cells have already died, and more damage will probably occur in the hours and days to come. But researchers at the University of South Florida and the University of Padova in Italy say a two-part package administered through the body, rather than directly into the brain, may be the key to staving...
Read More
If a head gets hit hard enough, the trauma occurs instantly. Neurons die, the brain swells as microglia cells rush to the damaged area, and the protective armor known as the blood brain barrier might even rupture. But it doesn't end there. Long term effects include cognitive impairment, loss of sensory processing, and susceptibility to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. Researchers at the University of South Florida say...
Read More