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<p>By mapping neurons and neuron circuitry during movement, Sabes’ lab hopes to one day to be able to print this information back into the brain. If feasible, such therapy could offer new hope to stroke victims whose brains are unable to recover on their own.</p>
<p>Scientists are making great strides in figuring out how the human brain develops, which are leading to novel ideas about the causes of a range of brain disorders, and are raising hopes for the regeneration of tissue that is lost in diseases such as Alzheimer’s. </p>
Scientists at UCSF have pinpointed a reason older adults have a harder time multitasking than younger adults: they have more difficulty switching between tasks at the level of brain networks.
Parkinson’s disease researcher Robert Nussbaum, a human geneticist and neuroscientist at UCSF, has been named to receive the prestigious Klaus Joachim Zülch Neuroscience Prize for 2011.
Synuclein is a protein that can cause Parkinson’s disease, although it is not clear how. UCSF researcher Robert Edwards, MD, now has discovered that synuclein can affect signal transmission between nerve cells long before disease symptoms arise.
In neurodegenerative diseases, clumps of insoluble proteins appear in patients’ brains. These aggregates contain proteins that are unique to each disease, such as amyloid beta in Alzheimer’s disease, but they are intertwined with small amounts of many other insoluble proteins that are normally present in a soluble form in healthy young individuals.
The Veterans Health Research Institute or NCIRE will present “The Brain at War: Neurocognitive Consequences of Combat” today (June 17).
UCSF researchers have created the first transgenic mouse to display the earliest signs of Parkinson’s disease using the genetic mutation that is known to accompany human forms of the disease.
A UCSF-led study examining the impact of statins on the progression of multiple sclerosis found a lower incidence of new brain lesions in patients taking the cholesterol-lowering drug in the early stages of the disease as compared to a placebo.
UCSF scientists have used a novel cell-based strategy to treat motor symptoms in rats with a disease designed to mimic Parkinson’s disease. The strategy suggests a promising approach, the scientists say, for treating symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases and disorders, including epilepsy.