A major effort to find biomarkers that identify serious head injury is underway

Ed. note: Today we are pleased to present a guest post from Chelsea Travers, a communications representative from CareMeridian who is educating the public about traumatic brain injury.Click on her name above for a full biography. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is all too commonly associated with modern warfare, particularly the War on Terror. Many veterans [...]

A new study has untangled the connection between depression and dementia, providing clear evidence that depression is a risk factor for dementia. Prior to this finding, it was unclear to researchers whether depression increased the risk of developing dementia or if dementia led to increased depression. Researchers screened nearly 1,000 participants and found 125 who [...]

This weekend, I read a fascinating article in Wired magazine about stress and your health. (The article isn’t online yet, but the author of the article, Jonah Lehrer, has pieces of the article on his blog.) {UPDATE: the article is posted on the Wired website now.} Lehrer talked to primatologist Robert Sapolsky about stress in [...]

Smell is a nuanced sense that does not get enough credit

Ed. note: Today we are pleased to present a guest post from Beth Tracton-Bishop, Ph.D, a gerontologist with The Hartford Advance 50 Team and an expert on aging and driver safety. Click on her name above for a full biography. Have you ever heard of the phrase “driving wellness”? It’s a relatively new term that takes [...]

The beta-amyloid plaques that kill the neural tissue of people with Alzheimer’s disease accumulate in retinal tissue before other parts of the brain.  These plaques usually develop in the brain before there are symptoms of cognitive decline.  Since there is no way to detect plaques in the brain, detection in the retinas would be the [...]

After nearly two decades in a semi-conscious state, a man has recovered the ability to speak and move, thanks to new nerve connections grown by his brain.  Nineteen years ago a car accident caused teenaged Terry Wallis to suffer a massive traumatic brain injury that left him capable of little more than occasional grunts. As [...]

A recent article by Fran Johns, a great True/Slant contributor who has written about Posit Science, talks all about telomeres. If you don’t know what telomeres are (I didn’t), they are protective caps on our chromosomes that help to regulate cell aging. Long telomeres = “younger” cellular age and better cell health. Short telomeres = “older” [...]

For many years scientists have been able to stimulate certain brain regions to treat various disorders, including depression and Parkinson’s disease.  This treatment method is often imprecise and over-stimulation of the brain can have damaging effects.  A recent study of deep brain stimulation therapy in patients with Parkinson’s disease found that patients with the brain [...]