Category: Research

Damaging tangles of the protein tau dot the brains of people with Alzheimer’s and many other neurodegenerative diseases, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which plagues professional boxers and football players. Such tau-based diseases can lead to memory loss, confusion and, in some, aggressive behavior. But there is no easy way to determine whether people’s symptoms are linked to […]

An international leader in neurofibromatosis research has received a $3.5 million grant to study why people with the same genetic mutation – in this case, a mutation that causes the genetic disorder known as neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) – develop markedly different signs and symptoms.

Feb. 8 (UPI) — Research from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, suggests the potential to prevent or reverse brain damage caused by tau protein in dementia patients. The study of mice and monkeys showed that tau antisense oligonucleotides, which are genetically engineered to block a cell’s production of tau, have the potential to treat […]

In some people, the brain protein tau collects into toxic tangles that damage brain cells and contribute to diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a drug that can lower tau levels and prevent some neurological damage. In neurons that contain the drug (above, in red) […]

Welders are in danger of developing symptoms similar to those of Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study that suggests exposure to fumes containing manganese makes things worse. Welding has been linked in previous research to a higher risk for parkinsonism. The term refers to a group of disorders that causes movement problems that mimic […]

Like many patients visiting a doctor’s office, Kim Sebenoler started out her appointment by heading to the nearest restroom to give a urine sample. But her visit to the lab of John Constantino, MD, director of the William Greenleaf Eliot Division of Child Psychiatry, was not a typical exam. The goal was not to measure […]

In a discovery that challenges conventional thinking, researchers report that several people over the age of 90 had excellent memory even though their brains showed signs that they had Alzheimer’s disease. The meaning of the findings isn’t entirely clear. The elderly people, whose brains were studied after their deaths, may have been in the early […]

Throughout our lives, our brains are always changing. To capture that transformation, scientists will scan the brains of people from kindergarten through their later years to build maps of the brain as it develops and changes over the decades.

Scientists have linked mutations in a single gene to autism in people who have a rare tumor syndrome typically diagnosed in childhood. The findings, in patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), may lead to a better understanding of the genetic roots of autism in the wider population.