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Written by Daniela Salas from the Foster lab, Michael Smith Laboratories and cross-posted to centreforbrainhealth.ca.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a mental disorder affecting the development of the nervous system, characterized by deficits in social communication and repetitive behaviours. This condition manifests in early childhood and lasts a person's entire lifetime, and the most important risk factor is genetic.
Research from Dr. Teresa Liu-Ambrose and colleagues has informed the new WHO guidelines for risk reduction of cognitive decline and dementia. Read the guidelines at who.int. Related: WHO issues first advice on dementia: exercise and don't smoke (REUTERS).
Dr. Alex Rauscher and his team are engaged in a long-term project to understand the effects of various tissue properties on the images produced by different magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications. His newest work, with postdoctoral fellow Dr. Christoph Birkl and published in the journal NeuroImage, offers a new perspective on the role of iron in myelin water imaging (MWI) and challenges existing interpretations of MWI findings in research literature.
Since publishing their first paper on the Closed-Head Impact Model of Engineered Rotational Acceleration Model of Engineered Rotational Acceleration (CHIMERA) model for concussion research in 2014, Dr. Cheryl Wellington and colleagues have delivered more than 15 copies of the model worldwide.
Pictured: Dr. Erin Michalak (left) and research coordinator Caden Poh (right) at the University of British Columbia. Image credit: Paul Joseph/UBC.
Wearable brain devices are now being marketed directly to consumers and often claim to deliver benefits like boosting memory and modulating symptoms of depression. Although the industry is quickly growing, little is known about the validity of these claims and the related ethical consequences or repercussions.
Hong Lu (pictured) is a hospital volunteer, avid pianist, neuroscience graduate student, and Vanier scholar. In Dr. Ann Marie Craig’s lab, he is a researcher studying synapse development in neuropsychiatric disorders including Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia; in the Purdy Pavilion at UBC Hospital, he connects with long-term care residents on a personal level.
Investigators led by Dr. Michael Hayden have examined more than 25 years of data to reveal new insights into predicting the age of onset for Huntington disease.
“This discovery may enable us to provide families with additional information,” said lead author Galen Wright, a research associate in the UBC Faculty of Medicine, CMMT and BC Children’s. “It could also potentially improve disease management by providing genetic counsellors with valuable data in the future.”
A new computational tissue model from Dr. Alex Rauscher and his team has enabled the researchers to quantify brain myelin and iron from MRI scans, offering new clues as to the role of myelin and iron in tissue damage and disease progression in multiple sclerosis (MS).
Pictured: Dr. Blair Leavitt in his lab at CMMT. Image source: UBC/Faculty of Medicine.
An international clinical trial has found that a new drug for Huntington disease is safe, and that treatment with the drug successfully lowers levels of the abnormal protein that causes the debilitating disease in patients.
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