American Brain Foundation

  SuperBowl Champion Ben Utecht received the Public Leadership Award from the American Academy of Neurology and joins Ambassador and 2013 American Brain Foundation Brain Paver Leadership Circle award winner, Christopher Prusinski,DO,FAHA,FAAN at the American Brain Foundation booth at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Philadelphia :

Blood Test for Alzheimer's Disease ?

  From Georgetown researchers, a ten phospholipid blood biomarker panel consisting of phosphotidylcholine and acylcarnitine revealed the breakdown of neural cell membranes inpatients that eventually declared themselves cognitively impaired such as that seen in Alzheimer's disease.
  The drawback, in real-world screening, the predictive value would be 35%, leaving two thirds of positive screening results in patients results to be false.
  By the authors own admission, this study requires external validation using rigorous clinical classification before further development for clinical use.
  Additionally, one must continue to broach the ethical conundrum of such predictive tests as this as well as CSF biomarker research results in a disease with no known cause or cure.
Nat Med 2014;DOI:10.1038/nm.3466

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation For Migraine Re-visited

  Patients treated with four weeks of transcranial electrical stimulation (tDCS) found relief from their chronic migraine headaches unresponsive to typical therapies. In this study the motor cortex was stimulated. High current was able to be safely and effectively to deep brain structures.
  Researchers from the university of Michigan, Harvard and the city college of the city of New York employed tDCS on 13 patients as preventative therapy resulting in a 37% reduction in head pain in the treated individuals.
 A  positive response was seen at four weeks but repeated treatments were needed for a lasting effect.
http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/mutimedial/videos/20347-migraine-patients-find-pain-relief-in-electrical-brain-stimulation

Front. Neuro., 21 March 2013 | doi 10.3389/fneur.2013.00025

Elsevier Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology/Evoked Potentials Section Volume 108, Issue 1, January 1998, pp. 1-16

Elsevier Brain Stimulation Volume 1, Issue 3, July 2008, pp 206-223

Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science Vol 31,Issue 2,pp88-95 April-June  1996 

Increased risk of Stroke Related to Elevated Tungsten in Urine

  Individuals with elevated levels of Tungsten (found in mobile phones and computers) demonstrated a strong association with an increased risk of stroke.
PLOS ONE November 11, 2013

Go Bilingual....Delay Dementia !

  Researchers found that bilingual patients developed dementia 4.5 years later than monolingual patients, even in illiterate patients.there was no added benefit of speaking more than two languages.
Neurology November 6, 2013

Fibromyalgia Patients May Have Polyneuropathy

   Patients who suffer with chronic pain that have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia (a form of central sensitization syndrome) underwent a multi-component analysis including neurologic exam, pathologic and physiologic markers, MNSI, UENS, AFT and distal leg skin biopsies. 41% of the skin biopsies supported a diagnosis of SFPN ( small-fiber polyneuropathy ).
PAIN June 7, 2013

BABIES ! with Alzheimer's disease Gene Mutation Show Changes in their Brains

  From researchers at Brown university, hundreds of infants were enrolled once their saliva was found to reveal gene mutations of APOE4. Those babies with at least one copy of the APOE4 mutation displayed changes in their brains affected by Alzheimer's on MRI. The significance of these findings is uncertain.
JAMA NEUROL. 2013; E-pub 2013 Nov. 25