Neurosciences - June 2014 Archives

  There is a tiny unsung hero in the medical world, the zebrafish. Studying it has led to countless breakthroughs, from understanding how ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic Children’s Center has again been ranked as the top performing children’s hospital in Minnesota, Iowa and the Dakotas on U.S. News & World Report’s 2014-2015 Best Children’s Hospitals rankings. Overall rankings for the Mayo Clinic Children’s Center significantly increased in nearly all of the pediatric specialties, including cancer (#13), cardiology and heart surgery (#13), gastroenterology and GI surgery (#17), nephrology (#25), neurology and neurosurgery (#19), pulmonology (#31) and urology (#11). “The Mayo Clinic Children’s Center brings Mayo Clinic quality to children and families not only through cutting-edge interventions such as the launch of the proton beam therapy for childhood cancer in 2015 and stem cell treatment for children with heart disease, but also through the integrated, multispecialty team approach that has served as the cornerstone of the Mayo Clinic approach to patients of all ages for more than 150 years,” says hospital director Randall Flick, M.D., M.P.H.

PHOENIX — In a new Mayo Clinic study, researchers examined the physical act of reading to see if practicing eye movements in school could lead to better early reading fluency. http://youtu.be/FyW7_-37Z5A   Saccades or rapid eye movements are required for the physical act of reading. Previous studies have shown that the ability to perform complex tasks such as saccadic eye movements are not fully developed at the age when children begin to learn to read. Eye movements in younger children are imprecise, resulting in the need for the eyes to go back to re-read text, leading to slower performance. When translated into the task of reading, it slows the reading rate and leads to poor reading fluency and may affect reading comprehension and academic performance.

JACKSONVILLE, Flórida — Neurocientistas da Clínica Mayo em Jacksonville, na Flórida, e da Universidade de Aarhus, na Dinamarca, trouxeram uma luz para a compreensão de falhas na conexão dos neurônios no sistema de compensação cerebral cérebro, contribuindo para problemas como o transtorno do déficit de atenção com hiperatividade (TDAH).

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Researchers at Mayo Clinic have demonstrated in a mouse model that their recently developed synthetic peptide carrier is a potential delivery vehicle for brain cancer chemotherapy drugs and other neurological medications. The findings appear in PLOS ONE. “Not only have we shown that we can transport eight different molecules, we think this method will be less disruptive or invasive because it mimics a normal physiological process,” says Mayo Clinic neuroscientist Gobinda Sarkar, Ph.D., the corresponding author of the study. The researchers are able to transport the drugs without modifying any of the molecules involved. They say this development will aid in evaluation of potential new drugs for brain cancer. The blood-brain barrier is meant to protect the brain from numerous undesirable chemicals circulating in the body, but it also obstructs access for treatment of brain tumors and other conditions. Too often the only recourse is invasive, which often limits a drug’s effectiveness or causes irreversible damage to an already damaged brain. Nearly all of the drugs that could potentially help are too large to normally pass through the barrier. Additionally, other methods may damage the vascular system.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Neuroscientists at Mayo Clinic in Florida and at Aarhus University in Denmark have shed light on why neurons in the brain’s reward system can be miswired, potentially contributing to disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They say findings from their study, published online today in Neuron, may increase the understanding of underlying causes of ADHD, potentially facilitating the development of more individualized treatment strategies. The scientists looked at dopaminergic neurons, which regulate pleasure, motivation, reward, and cognition, and have been implicated in development of ADHD. They uncovered a receptor system that is critical, during embryonic development, for correct wiring of the dopaminergic brain area. But they also discovered that after brain maturation, a cut in the same receptor, SorCS2, produces a two-chain receptor that induces cell death following damage to the peripheral nervous system. The researchers report that the SorCS2 receptor functions as a molecular switch between apparently opposing effects in proBDNF. ProBDNF is a neuronal growth factor that helps select cells that are most beneficial to the nervous system, while eliminating those that are less favorable in order to create a finely tuned neuronal network.