Rethinking Concussion Assessment: Advances in Brain Network Activation

BY Jeffrey S. Kutcher, MD Technology called Brain Network Activation allows health care professionals to evaluate brain network function after traumatic brain injury and during recovery. The natural evolution of science and technology has increased our understanding of the brain and shown us how this vital organ works on a functional and cellular level. Much progress has been made — our knowledge is vastly more advanced today than it was even a decade ago. Yet […]

Down Syndrome Research Untangles Therapeutic Possibilities for Alzheimer’s

​September 17, 2015  |  Jackie Carr More than five million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Of them, 400,000 also have Down syndrome. Both groups have similar looking brains with higher levels of the protein beta amyloid. In fact, patients with Down syndrome develop the abnormal protein at twice the rate. Results of a pilot study, published in the September issue of Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, confirms the pathogenic role of beta amyloid in dementia […]

‘Chloe’s Law’ educates would-be parents about Down Syndrome

Doctors warned the Kondrich family that their daughter would be different. They were right. In the past year alone, Chloe Kondrich has hung out with rock stars in Manhattan; visited with Gov. Tom Wolf; posed for photos with members of Congress; and just last week traveled to Harrisburg, by invitation, to meet with Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education Pedro A. Rivera. One other thing, too: Chloe, who has Down syndrome, had a law named after her. […]

New mechanism discovered behind infant epilepsy

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden have discovered a new explanation for severe early infant epilepsy. Mutations in the gene encoding the protein KCC2 can cause the disease, hereby confirming an earlier theory. The findings are being published in the journal Nature Communications. Through large-scale genetic analyses of a family with two affected children at SciLifeLab in Stockholm, mutations were identified in the gene encoding the transport protein KCC2. In a […]

Turning breath into words – new device unveiled to give paralysis victims a voice

A new device which transforms paralysis victims’ breath into words – believed to be the first invention of its kind – has been developed by academics from Loughborough University. Billed as a tool to help bring back the art of conversation for sufferers of severe paralysis and loss of speech, the prototype analyses changes in breathing patterns and converts ‘breath signals’ into words using pattern recognition software and an analogue-to-digital converter. A speech synthesizer then […]