Disease | Neuroamer

Archive for the ‘Disease’ Category

The Primate Paradox and Circuit Psychiatry: similarity between primate and human brains makes primate research potentially necessary for psychiatric cures, but does it also make it unethical?

06Nov16

Circuit Neuroscience Recently, research into psychiatric disease has made great strides, but continued progress may require unpopular and ethically murky research. Joshua Gordon, the new director of the National Institutes of Mental Health writes in this month’s Nature Neuroscience: “At this unique and exciting time for psychiatry, novel therapies for individuals with mental illnesses seem just around […]

Filed under: Animal Rights, Anxiety, Behavior, Circuit Neuroscience, Disease, Ethics, Human, Motor, Mouse, Optogenetics, Primate, Schizophrenia, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: Animal Rights, Anxiety, Ethics, neuro, Neuroscience, Primates, Psychiatry

From Tasting Urine to Metabolome-Wide Association Studies–Advances towards personalized nutrition and biomarkers for disease

12Oct12

Metabolomics has come a long way since the days of tasting urine. Now techniques like high-throughput mass spectrometry can provide us detailed information about the small molecules we find in the body–which can be influenced by diet, environmental exposure (to toxins, medicine, etc), or even the gut microbiome. Metabolomics will also capture the genetic or […]

Filed under: Disease, Metabolomics, Nutrition, Psychiatric | 3 Comments

Why Conspiracy thinks he’s possessed by two intergalactic space demons – an Interview with Jonathan Balazs director of Mars Project

11Jul12

You may have seen my tweet about the upcoming documentary Mars Project, which tackles complex issues such as mental illness, drug use, psychiatry, race, and stigma. When director Jonathan Balazs contacted me about his film, I got really excited about it. If you liked the teaser but want to learn more about the project, check out Balazs’s Indie-Go-Go page […]

Filed under: Antipsychotics, Antipsychotics, Drugs, Film, Genetics, Human, Psychiatric, Schizophrenia | Leave a Comment

Top 10 most prescribed psychiatric drugs, top 10 overall, and the 10 we spend the most money on

06Jul12

What prescription drugs do we take and why are we taking them? Get a glass of water, choke down your horse pills, and take a look at the 10 most prescribed psychiatric drugs, 10 most prescribed drugs overall, and the 10 most profitable drugs, followed by a bit of analysis (though maybe what you need is psychoanalysis). […]

Filed under: Antipsychotics, Anxiety, Benzodiazepine, Depression, Dopamine, Pharmacology, Psychiatric, Public Health, Schizophrenia, Serotonin, SNRI, SSRI | 5 Comments
Tags: Drugs, Medicine, Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacology, Pharmacy, Prescription Drugs

Card sorting, pot smoking, pleasure and one gene: COMT

29Jun12

COMT, Catechol-O-methyl transferase, is an enzyme that degrades catecholamines–such as dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine (or adrenaline and noradrenaline as they are called in the UK). It was first discovered in the ’50s by Nobel laureate and pirate Julius Axelrod. More recently, scientists discovered an evolutionarily recent nonsynonomous single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the protein-coding portion of […]

Filed under: Behavior, Cannabis, Dorsolateral PFC, Drugs, Genetics, Human, Schizophrenia, SNPs | 9 Comments
Tags: Biology, cogsci, Genetics, neuro, Neuroscience, psychology, Science

Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are – Sebastian Seung’s new book

08Jun12

The connectome is a map of all neural connections in a brain, which I believe only currently exists for the flatworm C. Elegans. Seung’s group and collaborators are working using serial electron microscopy, and partially automated EM analysis and the crowdsourcing site eyewire to reconstruct parts of the mouse retina, with the hope of steadily improving technologies […]

Filed under: Anatomy, Books, Connectomics, Connectopathy, Crowd Sourcing, Development, Electron Microscopy, Mouse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Connectomics, Connectopathy, Development, Electron Microscopy, Neuroscience, Wiring

Using machine learning, Harvard researchers create a web-based tool to diagnose autism in minutes

08May12

Original full text of the study available from Translational Psychiatry here. Conventionally, children are diagnosed using Autism Diagnostic Interview, Revised (ADI-R) a 93-question survey, and/or the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) which measures behavior. The two test can take up to 2.5 hours and must be administered by clinical professionals. Dennis Wall–the lead author of the paper and director […]

Filed under: Autism, Behavior, Disease, Human, Psychiatric, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

New sequencing study links autism to FMRP, the gene disrupted in fragile X syndrome and a regulator of synaptic plasticity

08May12

Scientists reported a new connection between autism and fragile x syndrome in the latest issue of neuron. They sequenced the exomes–the parts of DNA that code proteins–of 343 families that had a single child with autism and at least one unaffected sibling. Looking at de novo mutations (ones that occurred in the sperm or egg […]

Filed under: Autism, Disease, Fragile X, Genetics, Human, Plasticity, Psychiatric | Leave a Comment
Tags: ASD, de novo mutations, exome sequencing, FMRP, genetics of psychiatric disease, rare mutations, simons simplex, synaptic plasticity

Genetics of Sleep – How much do you need?

29Nov11

Whenever I hear a friend talk about how they only sleep 6 hours a night—I feel a combination of pity (that must be rough) and annoyance (how can they do that to themselves), but reading up on the genetics of sleep maybe I should be feeling jealousy (since I need at least 8 solid hours). […]

Filed under: Channels, Drosophila, Genetics, Human, Metabolic Syndrome, Molecular, Public Health, Sleep | 1 Comment

Can THC treat Anorexia and Bulemia? – Endocannabinoid systems are altered in eating disorders

02Nov11

“The munchies” — an effect of THC causing heightened craving and enjoyment of food after taking is currently used to help HIV patients and cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy patients maintain their weight. New research indicates that THC could help anorexics and bulemics regain weight–though probably not through “the munchies.” A new PET imaging study reported […]