University of California San Francisco
Give to UCSF
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.
<p>Michael Weiner, who is a professor at UCSF and an investigator of the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), accepted the 2011 Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Award from the Alzheimer’s Association on behalf of the ADNI.</p>
A documentary debuting today shows how UCSF researchers are using innovative multidisciplinary treatment strategies for patients living with Parkinson’s disease.
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.
For patients with glioma, the most common primary brain tumor, new findings may explain why current therapies fail to eradicate the cancer. A UCSF-led team of scientists has identified for the first time that progenitor rather than neural stem cells underly a type of glioma called oligodendroglioma.
UCSF Nobel laureate Stanley Prusiner, MD, and colleagues have called for Congress to more than quadruple annual federal funding for Alzheimer’s research, saying that with a dedicated effort, there is a chance for a breakthrough against the disease by 2020.
Rapamycin, an FDA-approved drug prescribed to prevent the rejection of transplanted organs, has been shown for the first time to decrease excessive alcohol consumption, binge drinking, and alcohol-seeking behavior in rodents.
UCSF scientists have received two grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to refine their human embryonic stem cell-based strategies for treating neurological diseases and liver failure.
UCSF Nobel laureate Stanley B. Prusiner, professor of neurology and director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, today (Oct. 15, 2010) was named to receive the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor for science and technology.
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.
An inexpensive, hundred-year-old therapy for pain – aspirin – is effective in high doses for the treatment of severe headache and migraine caused by drug withdrawal, according to a new study by researchers with the UCSF Headache Center.
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.