First Clear-Cut Risk Genes for Tourette Disorder Revealed
Researchers made a significant advance, identifying the first “high-confidence” risk gene for Tourette disorder as well as three other probable risk genes.
University of California San Francisco
Give to UCSFResearchers made a significant advance, identifying the first “high-confidence” risk gene for Tourette disorder as well as three other probable risk genes.
After undergoing surgery, elderly patients often experience cloudy thinking. Mounting evidence suggests that heightened inflammation in the brain following surgery is the more likely cause.
A newly approved drug that is the first to reflect the current scientific understanding of multiple sclerosis is holding new hope for the hundreds of thousands Americans living with the disease. It also highlights the importance of clinician scientists like UCSF’s Stephen Hauser who are working to transform research into cures for patients.
Studying brain disorders is complicated for many reasons, not the least being the ethics of obtaining living neurons. To overcome that obstacle, UCSF postdoc Aditi Deshpande is starting with skin cells.
Sharks, rays and skates can hunt for prey hidden in the sandy sea floor by “listening” for faint traces of bioelectricity – they can literally sense their prey’s heart beating.
In an unprecedented leap from lab to patients, a potential treatment for childhood epilepsy identified in experiments with zebrafish.
New research is paving the way to a precision medicine approach to the diagnosis and treatment of patients with traumatic brain injury.
Research uses brain “organoids” — tiny 3D models of human organs that scientists grow in a dish to study disease — to identify root causes of MDS, a rare genetic disorder that causes fatal brain malformations.
Distinct sets of genetic defects in a single neuronal protein can lead either to infantile epilepsy or to autism spectrum disorders.
For concussion sufferers, physicians may now be able to predict early on who is more likely to continue experiencing symptoms months or years after the head-jarring event.
Children with severe cases of epilepsy such as Dravet syndrome are finding new and unexpected cures thanks to determined pediatricians and translational research at UCSF.
Researchers at UCSF have developed a new optogenetic tool that can be used to completely eliminate single cells from brain networks in animals. The researchers believe the new tool will enable exquisitely precise experiments to help researchers understand how each cell contributes to the whole.
UCSF scientists have discovered an unexpected mechanism the brain uses to seamlessly compensate when speech sounds are obscured by noise.
Stories about sensory processing disorder, videos about “zombie” cancer cells, and news about the effects of caffeine and alcohol on the heart were among the topics that most engaged our readers in 2016.