madness Authors: Chiara Bressan, student of the European Master’s in Clinical Linguistics & Adrià Rofes, assistant professor of neurolinguistics at the University of Groningen Imagine yourself tied to a chair. You cannot move, you are fully conscious, and a strange individual behind you is about to carve into your skull. No, you are not an […]
Intermittent fasting, that is, eating only over a certain time period during the day, can have positive mental health effects, at least according to a recent study . Intermittent fasting for 16 hours a day, that is a 16:8 fasting paradigm, for five days a week during three months improved quality of life while decreasing […]
In 1868, the famous, powerful and short French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, known as “the Napoleon of the Salpêtrière hospital”, described a new disease. He called it “sclerose en plaque” in reference to the numerous scars or sclerosis seen in the white matter of the brain and spinal cord. We now call it multiple sclerosis. Multiple […]
Clinical research has fundamentally discriminated women, assuming that they are nothing more than “small” men and therefore, drugs should work mostly the same if just adjusting the dose to their lower weight. However, this has been proven not to be the case. The physiology of the two sexes differs in several parameters, that is why […]
Electrical stimulation of the spinal cord can help recover mobility in some paralysed patients. However, the mechanism underlying this partial recovery of function remains unknown. A recent human study has confirmed the involvement of a group of cells previously identified in mice, paving the way to targeted treatments. In a recently published study in Nature […]
In 1906, Alois Alzheimer, a psychiatrist and neuroanatomist, reported “a peculiar severe disease process of the cerebral cortex” to a gathering of psychiatrists in Tübingen, Germany. The case was a 50-year-old woman who suffered from memory loss, delusions, hallucinations, aggression and confusion – all of which worsened until her untimely death five years later. In […]
Antidepressants are the mainstay for treating depression, but their use is clouded by doubts about their short-, medium- and long-term efficacy. This is not to say that we should not use them, as these drugs save lives in many cases, but a recent review reinforces these questions as it sees little difference in the quality […]
A single MRI scan of the brain using standard equipment could be enough to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, according to new results. The research uses machine learning technology to look at structural features within the brain, including in regions not previously associated with Alzheimer’s. The advantage of the technique is its simplicity and the fact that […]
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating autoimmune condition whereby neurons lose their myelin sheath leading to impaired neural transmission, neural degeneration and motor symptoms. Multiple factors have been considered to influence its development, like vitamin D, but now, a couple of studies have shown that the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is linked to multiple sclerosis. You […]
Acute leukemia is characterized by the proliferation and accumulation of hematopoietic progenitor cells (which are able to differentiate to create specialized cell types) in the bone marrow that impede normal blood production. D epending on the cell population affected, it can be classified in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). ALL starts […]