Neurology Medicine

Posts Tagged ‘Alzheimer’

The researchers based their study on healthy brain aging because they believe that knowledge in this field can be useful for the development of future tools for diagnosis of dementia, a disorder that involves progressive loss of cognitive functions, because to damage or brain disorders beyond those attributable to normal aging. On the other hand, one of the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease is the appearance of personality changes in people who have it. Some research has found, in fact, in the early stages of this disease, people tend to become more neurotic and less scrupulous.

According to the researchers, is therefore crucial to know the relationship between personality and state of the brain during aging in healthy people, to establish what happens in the brains of people with certain diseases and also to generate early diagnosis.

Scientists explain that many previous investigations of non-human animals have shown that chronic stress is linked to certain adverse effects on the brain. From these investigations, Head and his colleagues established the hypothesis on which they based their study: negative traits of human personality could also affect our brain, in particular during the aging process.

Thus, they assumed that neurosis, a mental disorder with no evidence of organ damage characterized by a high level of anxiety and the onset of repetitive behaviors to try to reduce stress levels, should be damaging to structural brain volume. The investigation focused on the middle temporal and prefrontal regions of the brain because it is these which produce the greatest changes during aging, and also because they are the brain areas that sit in certain cognitive abilities such as attention, emotions and memory.

According to statements by one of the authors of the research, psychologist Denise Head, appeared in a statement from Washington University, the results are a first step toward understanding how personality can affect brain aging. Head argues that these data clearly demonstrate a relationship between personality and brain volume, particularly in brain regions associated with social information processing and emotions.

Also, the researcher adds that the results suggest that personality influences the degree of aging of the human brain and also the way the brain aging may affect the personality of each individual. The researchers plan to conduct future studies to monitor the structural changes that will suffer the brain of the participants in this research, in order to deepen this process and its links to personality.

A team of psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, has discovered a relationship between the personality of older people and the state of the brain in old age. According to the scientists in an article published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, in general, during aging, there is a reduction in the volumes of certain brain regions, particularly in the middle temporal and prefrontal areas. However, these reductions or changes do not occur equally in all people, because, according to the results, neuroanatomical integrity can be modified to a lesser or greater extent depending on certain individual personality traits. Read the rest of this entry »

Biotechnology company Biotech Araclon Aragon has been invited to participate in BioChicago 2010, the largest biotechnology fair in the world, to present the results of his research on Alzheimer’s disease, along with two of the most prestigious Spanish biotech companies. In particular, Araclon Biotech, owned by Viamed Health Group, has staged a conference to present their progress in Alzheimer research in a monographic session on the disease within the Congress, held 3 to 6 May in Chicago with the assistance of more than 14,000 professionals, the company said in a statement. Read the rest of this entry »

People with some kind of neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s, are “more likely” than others to malnutrition, since this type of disease involves the “progressive loss” of cognitive functions, leading to a decline in the performance daily activities, among which is adequate food. This has been one of the topics discussed by Dr. Francisca Pereyra in the course on specific nutritional support is developed in the Hospital Our Lady of Candelaria, Tenerife, Canary Islands the government said in a press release. Read the rest of this entry »