Medical blog » Brain

FDA Allows Brain Implants for Obsessions

admin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 03:29:08 +0000

Once the electrodes are implanted, clinicians can control how electrical pulses are delivered to the brain using a battery-run, pacemaker-like device outside the body. By trial and error, doctors figure out what patterns of electrical activity are most likely to help patients while producing the fewest side effects.
OCD is a condition that prompts people to have debilitating and recurring thoughts and compulsive behaviors, such as hand-washing. It is an anxiety disorder, and the FDA approval suggests officials believe that deep brain stimulation might help reduce anxiety. The device was approved for use when conventional treatments, such as medications and talk therapy, have not worked.
The FDA action was designated a “humanitarian device exemption,” a regulatory mechanism designed to encourage the development of treatments for disorders that affect fewer than 4,000 people in the United States. Manufacturers do not have to prove that the device helps patients, only that it can be used safely and is likely to be effective. The FDA said it based its decision on a small study that found deep brain stimulation improved the condition of 26 patients with persistent obsessive-compulsive disorder by an average of 40 percent.
The device approved by the FDA is called Reclaim and is manufactured by Medtronic Inc. of Minneapolis.

Oak Cliff baby, brain damaged after injury, taken off life support

admin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:18:48 +0000

Oak Cliff baby, brain damaged after injury, taken off life support
09:29 PM CST on Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Darlene Diles spent the first 17 days of her life in her mother’s care She spent the remaining days of her life hooked to tubes and machines On Tuesday afternoon, Darlene’s “It was a hard decision, but I’d rather for her to just go like that The decision came four days after a Dallas County juvenile district The judge’s ruling came against the wishes of Brown. Her involvement in “She expressly stated she didn’t want Mr. Michael Diles to make that Contacted on Wednesday, N’Duka said that her client had not authorized After Friday’s hearing, family members and court-appointed advocates “The hospital has expressed concerns that someone is going to need to Diles, who works as battery technician, said he has five other children. “She was just a darling,” Diles said. “She smiled On Jan. 30, Darlene stopped breathing. According to a doctor’s report Brown said that Darlene cried afterward and that she tried to feed her Once there, Brown’s mother tried rescue breathing at the instruction of The doctor reported that he found no skull fracture or scalp swelling It wasn’t the first time Brown had been implicated in a case of abuse. In that case, Brown told authorities that she yanked the infant’s arm as A funeral for Darlene Diles had not yet been scheduled late Wednesday. Diles said he held his daughter for a while after she was taken off life “I went back to the hospital after she passed, and held her for about an before an injury on Jan. 30 left her with severe brain damage.
inside Children’s Medical Center Dallas, where doctors blamed her head injury on child abuse.
father decided to allow doctors to take her off life support. The 35-day-old baby died several hours later in her grandmother’s arms, he said.
than have to suffer the rest of her life,” said the father, Michael Diles, 39. “They said she would never have been able to walk, talk, open her eyes or hear or anything.”
court judge granted Diles the right to participate in decisions about his daughter’s medical care. He and the mother, 19-year-old K.C. Denise Brown, were not married and split up before Darlene’s Jan. 13 birth.
her daughter’s injuries is under investigation, but she has not been charged with any crime.
decision,” Brown’s court-appointed attorney, Angie N’Duka, told the judge during a hearing Friday. She said her client spoke to her from Terrell State Hospital. Brown is being treated there after having suicidal thoughts following her daughter’s injuries.
her to speak publicly about the case.
attended a meeting on Darlene’s continued life support.
make a medical decision on what is going to be in the best interest of the baby,” one of advocates wrote in a status report.
He said that he remained on good terms with Brown and visited their infant daughter regularly.
a lot.”
filed in court, Brown said she accidentally dropped her daughter on the kitchen floor of her southeast Oak Cliff apartment.
but soon realized the infant wasn’t breathing. The report says Brown then called her mother, who came over to help.
a 911 operator until paramedics arrived.
consistent with a fall. Instead, he found internal head injuries consistent with being shaken, court records say.
In 2006, she lost custody of Darlene’s half sister – who was no more than a month old – after that infant suffered a broken arm and other injuries.
she slipped from her grasp, court records say. The other injuries were left unexplained. That daughter, now 2, was placed with a relative.
Her father said arrangements would be handled by Lott’s Mortuary in Dallas.
support, and again after she died.
hour when she didn’t have no tubes or nothing on her,” he said.

Medtronic wins FDA approval for Reclaim brain stimulation therapy

admin — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:58:12 +0000

Feb 23, 2009 (Datamonitor via COMTEX) –
— Medtronic, a medical technology company, has received approval from the FDA for a humanitarian device exemption for its Reclaim deep brain stimulation therapy for chronic, severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The company also announced the first enrollment in its multi-center, randomized clinical trial of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for treatment-resistant depression.
Medtronic is proceeding with the FDA investigational device exemption approval for five centers to enroll patients in the clinical trial of DBS for treatment-resistant depression throughout the US, including the Cleveland Clinic, which was the first to enroll a patient in the trial.
According to the company, Reclaim DBS is the first medical device to receive the FDA’s approval for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and is also the first psychiatric indication to be approved for DBS.
Ali Rezai, neurosurgeon at Cleveland Clinic and investigator in early studies of DBS for OCD, said: “For patients with OCD, DBS therapy represents an alternative therapeutic approach, which may be an option for patients who did not experience a benefit from more traditional treatments. The clinical trial of DBS in treatment-resistant depression is an important step in understanding this therapeutic approach for patients with severe depression.”

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Computerized Brain Fitness Could Improve Memory

admin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:30:45 +0000

Conventional wisdom tells us that advancing age slows down memory.
But some researchers suggest the brain is plastic and, with the right training, you can keep it up to speed no matter how old you are.
The University of Southern California is studying a computerized brain fitness program.
‘Brain fitness’ is based on neuroplasticity – the science that suggests the brain is plastic and can physically change and rejuvenate at any age.
That is, if you put it through the proper mental workout.
“It’s not just repeating activities over and over again, like crossword puzzles,” said Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski. “It’s doing something new. It’s doing something that really challenges that seems to make the difference.”
Program developers claim ‘brain fitness’ exercises boost memory by challenging the senses.
For example, in one task you hear a sound and click if the tone goes up or down.
There are varying degrees of difficulty.
But older participants who took on the challenge improved memory and reversed their brain’s age.
“They were performing like people ten years younger than themselves on memory tests,” said Dr. Zelinski.
Some increased their ability to process information by 131 percent and a three-month follow-up study showed the improvement stuck.
A five-year follow up on participants is currently under way.
Other exercises that may help rejuvenate your brain include learning a new language or taking up a musical instrument for the first time.
The brain fitness program is available to the public.
It costs about $400.
.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Brain-booster drugs may help adults' memories

admin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:58:40 +0000

A drug used for stroke patients may help sharpen middle-aged brains, researchers are reporting.
If proven in humans, the drug may one day help blunt the impact of normal aging “or even enhance learning and memory throughout the life span,” the American Psychological Association said in an announcing the findings, published in the February issue of the journal, Behavioral Neuroscience.
“I do think that we are going to move into that area,” says lead author Matthew Huentelman, an investigator at the non-profit Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.
“Really, we stumbled on this drug, and what do we do with it? Our drug is only supposed to be used for sick people. Can it be used for healthy individuals as well? It’s a tough question.”
University students are already using Ritalin and other prescription amphetamines to boost their grades. A survey by Nature, a top science magazine, last year revealed one-fifth of its global readership admitted to using “cognition-enhancing” drugs to help them concentrate. And seven prominent neuroscientists and ethicists recently argued in the same journal that not only is the trend likely to grow, but that “mentally competent adults” should be free to use safe cognitive enhancements without being made out to be felons.
But is using brain enhancers to boost productivity and give people a competitive edge cheating, like doping in sports? Would workers need protection from pressure from employers to “enhance?”
Several drugs now being tested in humans may help stave off normal, age-related memory decline in healthy people, and many drugs used to treat psychiatric and neurological problems can also increase how quickly and accurately people think.
The Arizona study began several years ago, when researchers identified a gene that plays a role in memory in humans.
Next they looked for drugs that affect the gene’s function. They tested Fasudil, a drug that improves blood flow to the brain, in rats.
They took 18-month old rats – the equivalent of late-middle-aged humans – and gave the rodents daily injections of hydroxyfasudil, the active form of Fasudil. (In rats, it’s easier to give the drug by injection. People take it in pill form.)
The dosed rats performed significantly better on water maze testing learning and memory than rats given a saline solution. The doped rodents performed more like four-month old rats, or the equivalent of a teenager in human years.
“It was a pretty significant improvement in their memory performance,” Huentelman says.
There were no side effects, and the drug has been shown to be safe and well tolerated when used in humans. The findings, and the relative safety of the drug, support its potential as a “cognitive enhancer in humans,” the researchers report.
Huentelman worries about cognitive-enhancers creeping into high schools and colleges, but if the drugs can push out the onset of Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias by even five years, “that’s a massive impact.”
“To me, aging is the worst disease, because it happens to all of us. Improving our ability to age, aging more gracefully as they famously say, is a benefit for all.”
Four of the researchers hold stock in the drug company that owns the rights to develop this drug class as a potential memory enhancer. They said the company was not directly involved in the study and did not fund any part of it.
skirkey@canwest.com

The brain fitness industry is mind-boggling. So which head games …

admin — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 08:22:55 +0000

The brain fitness industry is mind-boggling. So which head games really work?
Is your brain switched to autopilot? If you’ve hit age 25 or so, it probably is.
Time to start exercising.
The notion of fitness for the brain has arrived — via video games, Internet sites and best-selling puzzle books. The lexicon includes terms such as “neurobics” and “brain calisthenics.”
Brain training may be trendy, and some of it questionable in terms of effectiveness, but it’s not a hoax.
It stems from what science is discovering about “neuroplasticity.”
They know about neuroplasticity at serious places such as the Brain Fitness Center at St. Luke’s Hospital.
“For decades we thought that you couldn’t form new connections in the brain,” said Marilyn Rymer, director of St. Luke’s Brain and Stroke Institute.
Brain research based on magnetic resonance imaging and other technologies is showing otherwise.
“We know now the new connections can be formed,” Rymer said. “It’s analogous to building muscle in the gym. But you have to do things you’re not used to doing.”
Adults tend to settle into routines in almost every aspect of their lives, she said, from jobs and friends to exercise routines and hobbies. They don’t embark on much new learning.
John Corbaley, who runs St. Luke’s Brain Fitness Center, said for many people at about age 25, after they complete their education and establish a daily work routine, the brain locks into “user mode.”
With less new learning, neuroconnectivity declines and so can memory and problem-solving skills.
Research shows certain activities can switch on the brain’s “acquisition mode.”
The gold standard for such training, Corbaley said, is software from Posit Science. The company provides the training program used at the center.
With auditory and visual cues, the computer program presents “games” and tests that get progressively more difficult and require participants to recognize “infinitesimally small differences in the stimuli,” Corbaley said.
Pat Clune of Leawood and husband Bob are among the “worried well” who have attended the center. Worried well is the expression for participants who aren’t injured or impaired but want to ward off lapses.
“We have a wonderful family and grandkids,” Clune said, “and we like being a part of their lives. We want to stay ‘with it’ as long as we can.”
One exercise at the center reminded her of the “concentration” card game, only tougher. On the computer screen was a 30-square grid, and clicking on a square produced a one-syllable sound, such as “cha.”
Identifying the sound, remembering its location on the grid and finding its match was a real challenge, she said.
So what about all the brain games out there? Do they really work?
Hard to say without clinical research to back them up, Corbaley said.
For instance, people think of crossword puzzles as good brain exercisers, he said, but if you become an expert at them, they won’t serve as the best cognitive stimulators.
Finally, brain fitness isn’t only about waking up the brain. Other factors must be addressed to maintain and improve brain health, namely: physical exercise, nutrition, stress management and sleep.
To reach Edward M. Eveld, features writer, call 816-234-4442 or send e-mail to
.

Hospital to Pay $6.5M For Boy's Brain Injury

admin — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:23:01 +0000

An Aurora family has been awarded a $6.5 million settlement in connection with a brain injury to their son caused by alleged negligence.
The settlement was reached on behalf of a now-7-year-old child who allegedly suffered a brain injury at birth at Provena Mercy Medical Center, the Beacon News reports.
Attorneys for the boy, Roberto Morales, Jr., say the attending obstetrician, as well as the labor and delivery nurse, failed to respond to the baby’s low heart rate and reduced oxygen flow caused by the drug Pitocin.
The settlement was reached Friday afternoon in Cook County Circuit Court. Morales was treated at Provena Mercy on April 7, 2001.
Attorney Mark McKenna, of McKenna & Mertz, PC., which represented the boy, said the lawsuit was filed in Cook County because Morales received the bulk of his care at a Cook County hospital. He was flown to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge after delivery, and remained there for a month, McKenna said.

Brain Fitness Coming to Senior Exercise Classes

admin — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:24:41 +0000

NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla.
,
Jan. 14
/PRNewswire/ — The American Senior Fitness Association (SFA) has announced a new brain fitness training program designed for exercise professionals. Brain Fitness for Older Adults teaches senior fitness instructors and personal trainers how to incorporate effective cognitive fitness into physical activity programs, offering seniors the opportunity to boost both physical and mental fitness simultaneously. Details are available at
.
Brain Fitness for Older Adults is a distance-learning program that requires 25 hours of home study to complete. Educational topics include brain anatomy and physiology, cognitive function in aging, links between physical exercise and memory, and brain health activities for use in senior exercise programs.
The plan for combining brain fitness with physical activity is the product of SFA’s ongoing Brain Fitness Project, which develops practical applications of new knowledge in neuroscience for use in the senior fitness setting. Older-adult fitness trainers work on a regular schedule with the population most at risk for cognitive decline, which is important since brain exercise, like physical exercise, must be performed regularly to produce and maintain results. The program is designed to take advantage of recent findings showing cognitive improvements from regular exercise among older adult participants.
Popular cultural trends currently reflect a widespread interest in brain health. Commercial products are being developed to inform laypersons and help them preserve their mental acuity. The technology industry has entered the brain health arena as well. According to the Associated Press, home-computer brain fitness software jumped from
in 2007. By 2015, it is expected to reach
.
said, “Because brain health affects overall health, cognitive fitness activity is essential to comprehensive senior fitness programming. Our system does not involve installing brain fitness computers in health clubs. Instead, it integrates mental exercise into the participants’ physical activity sessions. One example is the use of mental imagery during cool-down exercises to sharpen seniors’ focus and attention skills.”
Since 1992, SFA has set the standard in senior-specific fitness education, recently earning the 2009 National Council on Aging Health Promotion Institute’s Best Practice Award for their educational programs. Expert peer review comments on Brain Fitness for Older Adults include “scientifically supported,” “outstanding,” “the most comprehensive study I’ve seen,” and “I would recommend this to anyone who works with the senior population.” The study package provides two textbooks, an educational DVD, a manual of brain fitness activity plans, and a CD-ROM of client handouts for each activity. The enrollment cost is
.
For more information, contact
: (888) 689-6791, (386) 423-6634, email:
This release was issued through eReleases(TM). For more information, visit
.

Brain's Magnetic Fields Reveal Language Delays in Autism

admin — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:39:58 +0000

About The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: The Children’s Hospital of
Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation’s first pediatric hospital.
Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care,
training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals and pioneering
major research initiatives, Children’s Hospital has fostered many discoveries
that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is
among the largest in the country, ranking second in National Institutes of
Health funding. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public
service programs have brought the 430-bed hospital recognition as a leading
advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit
.

Your brain, on a diet

admin — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:42:02 +0000

Your brain, on a diet
12:00 AM CST on Tuesday, January 13, 2009
maryjacobs44@yahoo.com
If you want to lose weight, you know what you need to do. You need to eat less and exercise more. Simple. And yet you don’t do it.
The truth is, most of us aspiring skinny people don’t need another diet or a new fitness regime. We need a mental regime. We need to figure out how to fuel the willpower and put mind over flab.
Think about it: “The thing that always precedes a behavior is a thought,” said Gareth Dutton, a psychologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee. “The things we tell ourselves can really make a difference when trying to lose weight.”
Take that fat, velvety slice of chocolate cake that beckons so seductively. Be honest: What do you say to yourself? Things like, “Just this once” or “I’ll feel deprived if I don’t have one.”
Cue the violins. The antidote?
“Grow up,” says Scott Thornton, a psychologist with offices at Medical City Dallas Hospital. Then, a bit more compassionately, he says, “That feeling of deprivation must be dealt with.” Do it by getting yourself into a calm, meditative state, he says, and start talking to yourself more productively.
You can find a number of weight-loss books and programs with specific tips for doing just that.
Take intenSati Life, a series of workout videos (www.intensati.com) that combine martial arts moves with mantras to replace those negatives. (Sign up for the Facebook group, and you’ll get a free daily pep talk via e-mail, too.)
Participants punch and kick while repeating phrases such as, “I am strong enough,” or “I am ready to change. I am changing right now.”
“We’re training people to have better conversations with themselves,” said Patricia Moreno, Sati Life’s New York-based founder. “It’s about keeping your attention on your intention.”
“Sati” means mindfulness or intention in Pali, the dialect of the Buddhist scriptures.
The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person.
Author Judith S. Beck doesn’t care whether you’re going South Beach or Sonoma; she’s going to tell you how to get your mind right first. (She’s an eminent cognitive psychologist and knows what she’s talking about, according to Thornton.)
Using the principles of cognitive therapy, Beck instructs the dieter to verbalize the cheesy ways you fool yourself. Then, fight back by writing and reviewing (daily) a list of all the reasons you want to lose weight. Create “response cards” – Post-its with alternative, more positive statements to replace self-defeating thoughts.
Most experts also advise dieters to set realistic expectations. Making promises you can keep, and keeping them strengthens the willpower muscle.
“Many people set the bar too high, they fail and then they get discouraged,” said Dutton.
Keeping a journal of everything you eat also helps, not just to keep track, but because it makes it harder to fib about how much you’re really eating.
So what do you say to that chocolate cake? Listen to your inner Buddha, says Thornton. Remember that thoughts arise, and they don’t mean all that much. “Just because you think you have to have that piece of cake doesn’t mean that you really do,” he said. “You don’t owe that thought anything.”