Genetic Mutations in ALS and Dementia

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University recently released findings related to the ability to manipulate brain cells in test tube studies. The purpose was to determine if new drugs might be used to stop the brain-destroying impact of a genetic mutation at work in some forms to two incurable diseases:  Dementia and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's disease ALS, sometimes known as Lou Gehrig's disease, named for the Yankee baseball great who died from it, which destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement.) Traditionally, “Efforts to treat neurodegenerative diseases have the highest failure rate for all clinical trials,” says J. D. Rothstein MD, PhD, professor of neurology and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the research described online in the journal Neuron. The research was funded by grants from several organizations including the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. This is very good news. In the future, this may mean that scientists analyze cerebral spinal fluid from patients with dementia and ALS in a new way. These may pave the way to develop markers that can be studied by clinicians to see if the treatment is working once the drug therapy is moved to clinical trials.

 

 

 

 

http://m.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/individualized_therapy_for_the_brain_targets_specific_gene_mutations_causing_dementia_and_als

Mindset and Perceived Status

Is there anything you can do to influence how people perceive you in terms of perception and group interactions? It appears that the answer is “yes.” Gavin J. Kilduff of New York University and Adam D. Galinsky of Columbia University, how you feel at the moment you join a new group has a significant impact on your initial status among the members of the group as well as your perceived status later on. Their findings suggest that whatever your typical baseline mindset, you can achieve a perceived higher status by increasing your happiness, eagerness, or sense of power just before you join a group. Harvard Business review summarized it this way:  people who were induced to feel happy (via writing about a happy experience) were subsequently rated by their teammates in a hypothetical snowstorm-survival task as having higher status (2.13 on a 1-to-7 scale) than those who hadn’t been primed to feel happy (1.79); similar effects were seen when people were primed to feel eager and powerful, and the status perceptions lingered for days, probably because of the reinforcing nature of group hierarchies. Studies have shown the positive benefits to brain and body of maintaining a happy, positive mindset. Now it appears that this impacts the way others perceive the person, as well. 

http://web-docs.stern.nyu.edu/management/Kilduff/KilduffGalinskyOnlineProof.pdf

Your Synapses and Neurons #2

• It's quite well established now that pugilistic trauma to your brain can actually break off the axon, the one large projection from each neurons. So what happens in conditions such as Alzheimer's? It seems that one of the ways in which Alzheimer's negatively impacts thinking ability involves the size of the synapse. Nerve endings begin to shrink and increase the distance between the end of an axon and the dendrite or another neuron. This increased space not only means that thinking takes longer but sometimes the message just cannot make it across the space. The process in the brain that should be sprouting nerve endings die and eventually, the person can no longer handle short-term memory or the retrieval of long-term memory. Are you afraid you are developing Alzheimer's? Get your brain evaluated and be sure you are doing a minimum of 30 minutes of challenging mental exercise every day. Avoid worrying, however, as worry is lethal for brain function. One bottom line says that you know you don't have dementia just because you misplace your car keys. On the other hand, you know you may have Alzheimer's when you see your car keys and forget what you would use them for.

Your Synapses and Neurons #1

Most people now know the term neuron (nerve cells in the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system) that have a special ability to talk with each other. They hold these conversations throughout a vast and intricate network. Estimates are that your brain alone contains about 100 billion neurons (and that there are thousands of neurons in your heart and at least a million in your intestines, and so on). These 100 billion neurons connect with each other via a quadrillion connections known as synapses (the tiny space between each neurons). The book Super Brain describes it this way: neurons project wormlike threads known as axons and dendrites, which deliver both chemical and electrical signals across the space between synapses. A neuron contains many dendrites to receive information from other nerve cells. But it has only one axon, which can extend out to over a meter (about 39 inches) in length. An adult human brain contains well over 100,000 miles of axons and countless dendrites--enough to wrap around the earth over four times. Wow!

Seeing Is Believing, 5 of 5

The McGurk effect (perceiving what you see rather than what you hear) arises during phonetic processing because the integration of audio and visual information happens early in speech perception. And it’s not limited to syllables. The effect can occur in whole words. The McGurk effect has also been examined in relation to witness testimony. Wareham and Wright's 2005 study showed that inconsistent visual information can change the perception of spoken utterances. It likely impacts daily interactions in a way that many are unaware of. According to Wikipedia, people who are used to watching dubbed movies may be among those who are not susceptible to the McGurk effect because they have, to some extent, learned to ignore the information they are getting from the mouth of the person speaking.  The take-away? Learn to pay attention and be aware of this phenomenon. If your eyes and ears register different meanings, ask for clarification. Of course, that’s assuming it involves in-person conversations and not something occurring on a movie screen!

Seeing Is Believing, 4 of 5

Some people, including those that have been researching the phenomenon for more than twenty years, have reported experiencing the McGurk effect even when they are aware that it is taking place. Although some people can identify most of what is being said from lip reading along, the majority of individuals are rather limited in their ability to identify speech from visual-only signals. An ability to use visual speech to increase the intelligibility of heard speech in a noisy environment can be a definite asset. Most think of speech perception as an auditory process. Studies have shown, however, that one’s use of information is immediate, automatic, and, to a large degree, unconscious^. This means that speech is not only something that is heard, it is perceived by all of the senses working together (seeing, touching, and listening to a face move). The brain is often unaware of the separate sensory contributions of what it perceives, so when it comes to recognizing speech the brain cannot differentiate whether it is seeing or hearing the incoming information. 

Seeing Is Believing, 3 of 5

New studies by researchers at the University of Utah have added to the body of knowledge related to the McGurk effect, suggesting a mechanistic underpinning for the McGurk effect (a perceptual phenomenon related to hearing and seeing in decoding speech).  In the brain, information from the visual cortex may be instructing the auditory cortex which sound to “hear” even before an auditory stimulus is received. According to the researchers, the McGurk effect is strong enough to be perceived even if the viewer knows the illusion is occurring, suggesting that visual stimuli can influence early representations of auditory stimuli. Meaning that knowledge about the phenomenon seems to have little effect on one's perception of it. This is different from some specific optical illusions which break down once one 'sees through' them. This understanding of multisensory neocortical language processing provides insight into the multisensory neural mechanisms underlying language perception and has implications for rehabilitation therapy and neural prostheses.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0073