Neuroscience:
XP13512 is an experimental new drug currently in phase III trials for the treatment of restless legs syndrome. I was reminded about this after seeing a post at sleepdoctor, and following the link to Sleep Expert, and browsing from there....
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Posted on March 12, 2008 8:10 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Zyprexa Adhera is a new formulation of Eli LIlly's antipsychotic medication, olanzapine. It contains the same active ingredient as the pills, but it is a long-acting injection. It is supposed to last two to four weeks. There is not a...
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Posted on February 7, 2008 8:02 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Several days ago, I saw an article about some research on the relationship between the price of wine, the subjective experience of taste, and the effect of wine on brain function as assessed by fMRI. The research is part...
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Posted on January 27, 2008 8:41 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Usually I cringe when I see yet another newspaper article about suicide. But I always read them. This time, I did cringe, but needlessly. The article turned out to be OK. F.D.A. Requiring Suicide Studies in Drug Trials By GARDINER...
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Posted on January 25, 2008 7:33 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Sounds too good to be true. Perhaps it is. For one, there is only one published case. For another, it has to be injected near the spine in order to have this effect. The arthritis medication, etanercept (Enbrel®) has been...
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Posted on January 14, 2008 9:00 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This cartoon was written before intranasal orexin was developed, but the same idea applies: Provigil (modafinil) is thought to act on the orexin system to promote wakefulness. Indeed, it has attracted some attention due to its potential to increase productivity....
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Posted on December 30, 2007 6:59 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Roche Molecular Diagnostics offers a test that can determine which type of genes a person has for enzymes that metabolize antidepressant medication. The test costs $ 300 to $400, and can be ordered by healthcare professionals, or by consumers. The...
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Posted on December 23, 2007 10:02 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is a brain MRI animation, showing sequential slices of the brain, from top to bottom. It was a featured image at Wikipedia. This was created by a Wikipedia user, Fastfission. The explanation follows: Made from an fMRI scan...
Posted on December 20, 2007 6:50 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I haven't gotten back to the "selection of antidepressants" series. Mostly that is because, alphabetically, the next one is supposed to be citalopram. While citalopram (Celexa™) is a perfectly fine antidepressant, it is kind of boring. So to spice...
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Posted on December 12, 2007 9:07 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A great deal of evidence has accumulated that there is a problem with regulation of cortisol levels in persons with posttraumatic stress disorder. Several years ago, it was demonstrated that adult offspring of persons with PTSD had lower circulating cortisol...
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Posted on November 30, 2007 12:08 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Using my new Firefox search box to search ScienceBlogs, I learned that Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) retards neural growth, screws up the circadian clock, is the subject of moralistic cartoons, and that it cannot be cured. True enough, it...
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Posted on November 26, 2007 8:02 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Agomelatine is a new chemical entity that is nearing approval for treatment of depression. It was developed by Servier Laboratories; they have entered into an agreement with Novartis for commercialization of the product (Valdoxan®). This represents a new approach to...
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Posted on November 25, 2007 8:28 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Simon N. Young, PhD, the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, has written an editorial: How To Increase Serotonin In The Human Brain Without Drugs. In is published in this month's edition of the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience....
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Posted on November 17, 2007 10:20 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The researchers did fMRI of brains of persons with Borderline Personality Disorder, before and after psychotherapy. This was a small study, using a design that would be difficult to use routinely, but it is provisionally interesting. Difficult, because the patients...
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Posted on November 6, 2007 8:25 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Anhedonia is one of the most important symptoms of depression. I wrote a post about it a while back, so I won't go into the definition in this post, other than to summarize by saying that it is the inability...
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Posted on November 3, 2007 2:01 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Medscape has an article about a study that shows a relationship between the amount of eduction a person has, and how rapidly memory loss occurs when they get senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT). The more education a person...
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Posted on October 30, 2007 8:18 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, and amended in 1977 and 1990. It has been mildly controversial, but most people supported it then and support it now. A retrospective economic analysis done in the early 1990's indicated...
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Posted on October 26, 2007 7:15 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Previously, I wrote about investigation of tDCS for treatment of fibromyalgia. Now there is evidence that it may have a role in treatment of an entirely different pain syndrome: migraine. Researchers Testing New Electric Treatment for Migraines By Morgen...
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Posted on October 15, 2007 8:56 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Actually, the full headline is: Genetic test for suicidal ideation in patients using antidepressant drugs. A company called Neuromark has made available a genetic test that it claims can identify persons who would have an increased risk for suicide after...
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Posted on October 1, 2007 6:49 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In the 1950's, a new class of antipsychotic drugs was discovered: the antipsychotics. Chlorpromazine (Thorazine®) was the first. By the 1970's, several related compounds had been discovered. In 1976, it was learned that there is a direct linear relationship between...
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Posted on September 4, 2007 9:30 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A while back, Shelly wrote a nice introduction to ADHD at Retrospectacle: The Neuroscience of ADHD. Read that first, for background, then consider this to be a minor addendum. There are still people who believe that ADHD is not real....
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Posted on August 10, 2007 9:50 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
At least in mice, that is: rendering the vomeronasal organ inactive by deleting the gene TRPC2 (transient receptor potential cation channel, subfamily C, member 2) results in profound behavioral changes. This was reported on Nature News: Nose goes, gender bends....
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Posted on August 5, 2007 6:59 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
An article in the Honk Kong Medical Journal reports on a seried of cases of Mah-jong Epilepsy. This is something I had not heard of before: it is considered a subtype of cognition-induced epilepsy. Mah-jong-induced seizures: case reports and review...
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Posted on August 4, 2007 1:32 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
PNAS has an open-access article describing the current state of knowledge of the genetics of autism. The authors looked at information from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange and two other databases; one from the University of Michigan, the other...
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Posted on August 2, 2007 10:02 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As reported in the journal, The Lancet, a man has been found who had a small brain, but a normal life. The article is subscription only so I am not even going to link to it. But it is still...
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Posted on July 22, 2007 11:55 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Sanofi-Aventis obesity pill, rimonabant, will be labeled with stronger warnings as a result of a review by The European Medicines Agency (EMEA). According to the EMEA press release on Acomplia (31 KB PDF file): The European Medicines Agency...
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Posted on July 21, 2007 8:32 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There was an outbreak of botulism in the past several days in the United States. The problem was traced to contaminated canned chili sauce intended for use on hotdogs. Product from Castleberry Food Company based in Augusta, Georgia is suspected....
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Posted on July 20, 2007 1:00 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There is new information indicating that an oxytocin nasal spray could be used to treat shyness. Oxytocin is a peptide hormone best known for its role in childbirth and breastfeeding. These are known as peripheral actions, meaning they take...
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Posted on July 18, 2007 7:04 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
While looking for information for my last post, I encountered another interesting article at PNAS. This one is about a new molecule that improved survival in mice infected with scrapie. Scrapie is one of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE)....
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Posted on July 16, 2007 8:16 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
We already knew that varenicline could be used to help people stop smoking. Now there is a report that it can help reduce alcohol consumption, at least for rats. This was reported in PNAS (Varenicline, an α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor partial...
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Posted on July 15, 2007 11:05 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A couple of Parkinson's Disease related items came across the news wires, briefly. There are lessons in both of them, but both leave me with unresolved questions. The first one I noticed was a report based upon a journal...
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Posted on July 14, 2007 8:15 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There is yet more information on the possible link between suicide and treatments for depression.
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Posted on July 10, 2007 11:28 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is another post in a series detailing the selection of antidepressant medication. Use the "Antidepressants" link in the "Categories" part of the sidebar to find the other posts in the series. In this post, I am sort of assuming...
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Posted on July 3, 2007 1:41 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is kind of a rambling rehash of an old post. But it turns out to be topical now. What is more it illustrates some interesting points about evolution: some obvious, others subtle. One thing is shows very nicely is...
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Posted on June 14, 2007 11:16 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Why is it that recovering persons with alcoholism should not drink near-beer (beer with little or no alcohol)? ...Hank had been dry for several weeks thanks to a radical withdrawal program, but a simple walk past Pete's Tavern on...
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Posted on June 9, 2007 7:01 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is an interesting drug. Rarely prescribed, but interesting. It is older than what we typically give today. It is an antidepressant with a twist. In order to understand why it is interesting, you need to know a little...
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Posted on June 3, 2007 6:53 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This post is about amitriptyline, one of the oldest antidepressants on the market in the USA. It also used to be the most widely-prescribed antidepressant. I've decided to not attempt an encyclopedic style of description of the pharmacological action of the...
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Posted on May 30, 2007 9:17 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Fast Company has an amusing and interesting article on pychopathy. Being a business-oriented magazine, they ask "Is your boss a psychopath?" But one could just as easily apply the same principles to other important people in your life, such...
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Posted on May 28, 2007 10:30 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
One of the things that most consistently surprised me, when I was doing the consultation-liaison rotation in residency, was how common delirium was, and how frequently it was missed by the medical team. Even since then, it has...
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Posted on May 21, 2007 8:15 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Domestic violence and other forms of childhood trauma are all too common. The effects of trauma on children have been studied in a variety of ways, but much of this research has not employed strict diagnostic criteria. Now, the Archives...
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Posted on May 14, 2007 9:13 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The work of Li-Huei Tsai on the partial restoration of memory was in the news a few days ago. Although the experiments were done on mice, it was hoped that the results could indicate a reason to hope that...
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Posted on May 4, 2007 11:17 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Nightmares are a terrible problem for many persons with posttraumatic stress disorder. Not only that, but they can be difficult to treat. Lately, the LA Times has taken to emailing me a summary of some of their Science &...
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Posted on April 17, 2007 9:05 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I really liked Jonah's post at The Frontal Cortex, about Dreaming, Smelling and Memory. But I have to take issue with his treatment of the use of dream interpretation in Freudian psychotherapy. I know this is a nit-picky point,...
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Posted on March 13, 2007 9:59 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The DSM refers to anhedonia as one of the two core symptoms of depression; the other core symptom is depressed mood itself. What is anhedonia, and why is it so important? First, let's consider what it is not. Those...
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Posted on March 8, 2007 8:57 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If you have ever been curious to know what the corpus callosum looks like in vivo, you can see it in this Google video: Pediatric Hemispherectomy Surgical Treatment For Epilepsy. The link starts the video at the point where they...
Posted on March 2, 2007 7:20 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Note: this post involves a very small amount of self-disclosure. That is a bit unusual. My father is also a psychiatrist. He told me once about his education in psychopharmacology. A guy got up to lecture, identified himself as the...
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Posted on February 28, 2007 10:45 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Scientific American makes note of a new finding regarding multiple sclerosis, first reported in The Journal of Neuroscience. One of the big shifts in our understanding of brain structure and function, over the past decade or so, has been...
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Posted on February 28, 2007 8:08 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Fibromyalgia is a disorder of chronic generalized muscle pain and joint stiffness with the presence on physical exam of at least 11/18 designated tender points. (The formal definition is a bit more involved.) Interestingly, the term was not accepted by...
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Posted on January 26, 2007 12:15 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
NEJM has a very interesting article about the use of PET scans to differentiate between persons with normal cognitive function, those with mild cognitive dysfunction, and those with Alzheimer Disease (AD). Unfortunately, you need a subscription to view the full...
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Posted on December 27, 2006 8:14 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Neurocritic has the latest edition of The Synapse. It's nicely done. Info of the next one, and instruction for submission, are at Jake's place, here....
Posted on October 30, 2006 11:01 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A while back, I wrote about the new treatment for ADHD that is under development, NRP104. The original post is here. In that post, I reviewed the pharmacology of NRP104. The basic idea is that the company took an old...
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Posted on October 29, 2006 1:15 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There is a lot of information about vagus nerve stimulation as a treatment for depression, that you can get from the latest New York Times article (Battle Lines in Treating Depression, permanent link) on the subject. Unfortunately, most of the...
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Posted on September 11, 2006 7:59 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
One of the articles that I read, early in my career, that influenced the way I think about neuroscience, was this one: Caudate glucose metabolic rate changes with both drug and behavior therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder L. R. Baxter Jr,...
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Posted on August 30, 2006 8:00 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Years ago, I read a paper in which the authors proposed a model, in which the immune system was conceptualized as a sensory organ for the central nervous system. They did not think of it as the primary purpose of...
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Posted on August 25, 2006 8:06 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
About 15 years ago, I was giving a lecture on psychiatric medication to a group of MSW students. One student asked a question that was intended to be provocative. She asked, "how can you justify giving medication to treat a...
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Posted on August 5, 2006 8:33 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I just finished reading a news release pertaining to a finding in psychiatric genetics. I was prepared to be irritated, but was pleased instead. New genetic findings add to understanding of obsessive-compulsive disorder Kara Gavin July 26, 2006 ANN ARBOR,...
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Posted on August 2, 2006 9:00 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
