All Posts
2008-05-12 10:12:41
by Translating Autism in Translating Autism
Psychology
A review of: Palomo, R., Thompson, M., Colombi, C., Cook, I., Goldring, S., Young, G.S., Ozonoff, S. (2008). A Case Study of Childhood Disintegrative Disorder Using Systematic Analysis of Family Home Movies. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders DOI: 10.1007/s10803-008-0579-1
I’m always hesitant to discuss or review case reports on this blog. Case reports have a very limited target audience (related researchers and clinicians) and even more limited utility. These are reports on single clinical cases, often of extremely rare conditions that are difficult to study with trad...more
- Ozonoff S. (2008) A Case Study of Childhood Disintegrative Disorder Using Systematic Analysis of Family Home Movies. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, DOI: 10.1007/s10803-008-0579-1
2008-05-12 10:12:03
by brainblogger in Brain Blogger
Clinical Research
Parkinson’s disease is a disorder that affects the central nervous system and causes an impairment of speech and motor skills. Parkinson’s disease affects 1 in 100 people that are over 60 years of age and has a nearly equal incidence rate in women and men. It is second only to Alzheimer’s disease as the most ...more
- Arenas E. (2008) Identification of midbrain floor plate radial glia-like cells as dopaminergic progenitors. Glia, 56(8), 809-820. DOI: 10.1002/glia.20654
2008-05-12 10:00:10
by Ed Yong in Not Exactly Rocket Science
Biology
A common wasp on a foraging mission catches an enticing scent on the breeze. It's a set of chemicals given off by plants that are besieged by hungry insects and it means that there is food nearby for the wasp's grubs - caterpillars. The wasp tracks the smell to its source - a flower - and while it finds nectar, there are no caterpillars and it leaves empty-mandibled. The smell was a trick, used to dupe the wasp into becoming a unwitting pollinator for the broad-leaved helleborine.
The broad-leaved helleborine (Epipactis helleborine) is an orchid that grows throughout Europe and Asia...more
- AYASSE M. (2008) Orchids Mimic Green-Leaf Volatiles to Attract Prey-Hunting Wasps for Pollination. Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.04.040
2008-05-12 09:11:23
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
Physics
In the May 1st issue of Optics Letters, a Korean research group has demonstrated another interesting application of surface plasmon resonances: the optical measurement of neural activity. Though I’m not sure how useful this technique will be in the long run, it shows that surface excitations can be used in sensors in many ...more
2008-05-12 05:02:22
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Psychology
A practice common to psychology research is to take some measure - let's say amount of support from friends and family - and to compare people with mental health problems and people without mental health problems, on this measure. The trouble, according to Idia Thurston and her co-workers, is where to find people without mental health problems.
The tactic used by most researchers is to recruit from the wider community, for example by advertising in the local paper. But Thurston's team argue a large proportion of the general community actually have their own mental health problems, a...more
- Phares V. (2008) How nonclinical are community samples?. Journal of Community Psychology, 36(4), 411-420. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.20223
2008-05-12 05:00:11
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Clinical Research
Are the recent claims to fame from a SSRI and rTMS right for treatment of vascular depression or just treatments seeking new markets? I think the latter. rTMS is of dubious efficacy in the treatment of depression and new "me too" SSRI's are struggling for a share.
Vascular depression is in the news, especially due to the latest annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington DC. Claim has been made that Several Therapies Show Promise for Vascular Depression meaning a SSRI and rTMS. See also Anxiety Insights.
But does the diagnostic entity of Va...more
- O'Brien J. (2008) Vascular factors and depression. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, DOI: 10.1002/gps.2020
2008-05-12 01:06:38
by Adiemusfree in Healthskills: Skills for Healthy Living
Psychology
The best way to start this week’s series of posts is by quoting Simmonds, Moseley & Vlaeyen (200 who said: ‘Chronic pain and its often associated movement dysfunction are pervasive, intriguing and complex problems … conceptualisation of pain and movement dysfunction has increased our understanding of both…that conceptualisation remains imcomplete until it also includes ...more
2008-05-11 23:00:18
by iayork in Mystery Rays from Outer Space
I’m not so much an antibody guy, but of course I’ve heard about catalytic antibodies. Catalytic antibodies bind, with the very high affinity that’s typical of many antibodies, to transition state molecules, stabilizing the transition state and facilitating the chemical reaction. They’ve been around for quite a while (I think the first, ...more
- Uda T. (2007) Catalytic Features and Eradication Ability of Antibody Light-chain UA15-L against Helicobacter pylori. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 283(2), 899-907. DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M705674200
2008-05-11 11:06:16
by brainblogger in Brain Blogger
Clinical Research
Some of you are wondering why anyone in their right mind would consider medications when this kind of concern exists....more
- Webb C. L. (2008) Cardiovascular Monitoring of Children and Adolescents With Heart Disease Receiving Stimulant Drugs: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association Council on Cardiovascular Disease in the Young Congenital Cardiac Defects Committee and the Council on Cardiovascular Nursing. Circulation, 117(18), 2407-2423. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.189473
2008-05-11 06:01:36
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Biology
A new paper in PLoS ONE (Lin et al., 2008) applied the methods of computational linguistics1 to analyze the database of abstracts presented at the 2001 to 2006 meetings of the Society for Neuroscience. The results provide an overview of the current state of the field.
Figure 8. (A) Visualization of topic map for all SFN meeting abstracts from 2001 to 2006. Abstracts assigned to different clusters appear in different colors (see legend). (B) Zooming in at the center of the topic map reveals more detailed clusters [click on the figure for a larger ...more
- Bajic V. B. (2008) An Analysis of the Abstracts Presented at the Annual Meetings of the Society for Neuroscience from 2001 to 2006. PLoS ONE, 3(4), e2052. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002052
