Gene Find Sheds Light On Motor Neuron Diseases Like ALS

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2008) — Scientists have identified a gene in mice that plays a central role in the proper development of one of the nerve cells that goes bad in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and some other diseases that affect our motor neurons.

The study is the result of a collaboration by scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center who normally focus on the eye, working together with a developmental neuroscientist at Harvard who focuses on the cerebral cortex. The work appears in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Neuron.

The work centers on corticospinal neurons, crucial nerve cells that connect the brain to the spinal cord. These neurons degenerate in patients with ALS, and their injury can play a central role in spinal cord injury as well. These are the longest nerves in the central nervous system – nerves sometimes several feet long that run from the brain to the spinal cord. As the ends of the nerves degenerate, patients lose the ability to control their muscles.

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Space Tech Prosthetic Leg Helps To Reach Long-jump World Record

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2008) — German athlete Wojtek Czyz, running with a space-tech enhanced prosthetic leg, set a new world record at the Paralympics 2008 in Beijing, reaching an amazing 6.50 m and beating the previous world record by 27 cm.

In spring 2004, ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme (TTP) technology broker MST Aerospace met with Wojtek Czyz and his trainer to perform a pre-screening of the most crucial elements of the prosthesis used by Czyz. Having lost part of his left leg three years before in a sports accident, he now uses a prosthesis in two athletic disciplines: long jump and sprint competitions.

"The objective was to see how to improve his performance, and we found the most important problem was related to a connection angle, the so-called L-bracket, between the knee joint and the foot module," explains Dr Werner Dupont, MST Aerospace Managing Director.

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ADHD Appears To Increase Level Of Nicotine Dependence In Smokers

ScienceDaily (Oct. 23, 2008) — Young people with ADHD are not only at increased risk of starting to smoke cigarettes, they also tend to become more seriously addicted to tobacco and more vulnerable to environmental factors such as having friends or parents who smoke, according to a study from Massachusetts General Hospital reseachers.

The report in the Journal of Pediatrics also found that individuals with more ADHD-related symptoms, even those who don't have the full syndrome, are at greater risk of becoming dependent on nicotine than those with fewer symptoms.

"Knowing that ADHD increases the risk of more serious nicotine addiction stresses the importance of prevention efforts aimed at adolescents and their families," says Timothy Wilens, MD, director of the Substance Abuse Program in the MGH Pediatric Psychopharmacology Department, who led the study. "It also gives us clues about how the neurotransmitter systems involved in ADHD and tobacco use may be interacting."

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New Hope For Multiple Sclerosis Sufferers

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2008)-A drug which was developed in Cambridge and initially designed to treat a form of leukaemia has also proven effective against combating the debilitating neurological disease multiple sclerosis (MS).

The study, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge, has found that alemtuzumab not only stops MS from advancing in patients with early stage active relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) but may also restore lost function caused by the disease. The findings were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Alemtuzumab has a long connection with Cambridge, England. In 1984, Cambridge scientist Cesar Milstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, jointly with George Kohler, for inventing the technology to make large quantities of a desired type of monoclonal antibody.

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NFB Launches “Project VIP” to Help Blind Voters on Election Day!

National Federation of the Blind Launches
“Project VIP” to Help Blind Voters on Election Day

Voting Specialists Will Provide Advice and Assistance to Blind Voters

Baltimore, Maryland (October 21, 2008): The National Federation of the Blind, the nation’s leading advocate for the voting rights of blind people, announced today that it is launching Project VIP (Voting with Independence and Privacy), a toll-free hotline that will be available to blind voters across the United States on Election Day. The purpose of the hotline is to help blind voters who are experiencing problems voting independently and privately as required by the Help America Vote Act. The National Federation of the Blind will have voting specialists on call to provide support to blind voters who call from their polling locations and to assist in troubleshooting problems with nonvisual voting technology. If a blind voter is unable to vote independently and privately, the voting specialists will record details such as the city, state, and polling location. The information from situations that cannot be resolved during a phone call to the Project VIP hotline will be referred to the proper authorities for follow-up action.

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “There is no right that is more fundamental in a democratic nation than the right to vote, and the 2008 presidential election is the first election in which blind Americans are guaranteed the right to cast their vote for president independently and privately. The National Federation of the Blind is setting up Project VIP to ensure that every blind voter can exercise this historic and invaluable right, for which blind Americans have fought and will continue to protect.”

On November 4, blind voters who experience problems voting independently and privately are urged to call 877-NFB-1940 (877-632-1940) from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. (EST). The voting specialists answering this number will assist the blind voter and/or the poll worker in resolving the issue. Voters are urged to call directly from their polling location to resolve voting issues rather than simply reporting problems after they occur.

How Epilepsy Develops: New Relationship Between Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor And Inflammatory Signaling

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2008) — In the October 14th edition of Science Signaling researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and The University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine have shown that the development of epilepsy in adult rats is linked to functional changes in the expression of alpha 1 containing GABA-A receptors, the main inhibitory neurotransmitter receptor in the brain, that may be dependent upon BDNF-induced activation of the Janus kinase (JAK)/signal transducers and activators of transcription (STAT) pathway.

Activation of the JAK/STAT pathway has previously been shown to be dependent upon cytokines and is implicated in a large number of inflammatory diseases

The multiple subunits of the GABA-A receptor show developmental and region specific expression in the brain and produce a diverse set of functional receptor isoforms. Drs. Shelley Russek, a molecular neuroscientist/pharmacologist from Boston University School of Medicine and Dr. Amy Brooks-Kayal, a pediatric neurologist researcher from the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, believe that changes in inhibitory receptors in a portion of the brain known as the dentate gyrus may be crtically important to the development of temporal lobe epilepsy, the most common type of epilepsy in children and adults. Decrease of GABA-A receptors containing alpha 1 subunits at the synapse, and increase of receptors containing alpha 4, has been associated with spontaneous seizures.

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Enabling The Blind To Find Their Way

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2008) — “Eyes on the future” is the mantra of the ‘World Sight Day’ held this month to raise awareness of blindness and vision impairment. New technologies, developed by European researchers offering the visually impaired greater independence, live up to this vision.

Many of the most innovative systems have been created by a consortium of companies and research institutes working in the EU-funded ENABLED project.

The project has led to 17 prototype devices and software platforms being developed to help the visually impaired, two of which have been patented.

Guide dogs, canes, Braille and screen readers that turn digital text into spoken audio all help to improve the lives of the blind or severely visually impaired, but none of these tools can make up for having a friend or relative accompany a blind person around and assist them in their daily life. However, a human helper is not always available.

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Parents Still Fear Autism Could Be Linked To Vaccines, Poll Shows

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2008) — The first national survey of attitudes toward autism reveals that a small but significant percentage of people still believe the disease is caused by childhood vaccines. The survey of 1000 randomly selected adults was conducted for the Florida Institute of Technology.

Nearly one in four (24 percent) said that because vaccines may cause autism it was safer not to have children vaccinated at all. Another 19 percent were not sure. This at a time when the Centers for Disease Control reports that autism affects one in 150 children born in the United States.

Scientists say there is no evidence linking vaccines and autism, but the lingering fear is leading to fewer parents having their children vaccinated and a growing number of measles infections. The New York Times reported in August that measles cases in the first seven months of 2008 grew at the fastest rate in more than a decade and cases in Britain, Switzerland, Israel and Italy are said to be soaring.

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Movement Restored To Paralyzed Limbs In Monkeys Through Artificial Brain-muscle Connections

ScienceDaily (Oct. 16, 2008) — Researchers in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have demonstrated for the first time that a direct artificial connection from the brain to muscles can restore voluntary movement in monkeys whose arms have been temporarily anesthetized.

The results may have promising implications for the quarter of a million Americans affected by spinal cord injuries and thousands of others with paralyzing neurological diseases, although clinical applications are years away.

"This study demonstrates a novel approach to restoring movement through neuroprosthetic devices, one that would link a person's brain to the activation of individual muscles in a paralyzed limb to produce natural control and movements," said Joseph Pancrazio, Ph.D., a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

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Couples With Children With ADHD At Risk Of Higher Divorce Rates, Shorter Marriages

ScienceDaily (Oct. 22, 2008) — Parents of a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are nearly twice as likely to divorce by the time the child is 8 years old than parents of children without ADHD, the first study to look at this issue in depth has shown.

Moreover, among couples in the study who were divorced, marriages involving children with ADHD ended sooner than marriages with no ADHD-diagnosed children.

William E. Pelham, Jr., Ph.D., professor of psychology and pediatrics at the University at Buffalo and director of UB's Center for Children and Families, is senior author on the study. Pelham is known internationally for his ADHD treatment and research, and each year conducts UB's Summer Treatment Program, a highly successful behavior-modification program that has helped hundreds of children with ADHD and has been replicated nationwide.

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Learning Disabilities Association of SC Conference

Dr. Russell Barkley, internationally known authority on the topic of ADHD, will be the keynote speaker for a conference titled “Reaching and Teaching the Struggling Learner” on Saturday, November 1, 2008, at the Columbia Conference Center in Columbia, SC. Dr. Barkley will speak on “Managing ADHD in the Classroom.” The conference is presented by the Learning Disabilities Association of South Carolina and cosponsored by the State Department of Education, Office of Exceptional Children. Breakout sessions will focus on practical strategies and information that teachers at all levels can use to help struggling learners.

When: November 1st, from 8am to 4pm
Where: Columbia Conference Center in Columbia, SC.
How much: Registration is $75 and $50 for students with student ID.

The registration form can be completed at http://mail.gforcecable.com/~ldasc/index.html or by clicking the title above.

SCAUTISM FORUM: SAVE THE PPD WAIVER

Dear Friends,

If you love someone with autism, please, contact your state representative and senator NOW and encourage them to maintain funding for the Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) Waiver/State- Funded Program. The PDD Waiver provides early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) services in the form of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to children with autism spectrum disorders in South Carolina.

Without the PDD Waiver, hundreds of children with autism across S.C. will be denied the right to live the highest quality and most independent, integrated, and inclusive lives possible.

Not every parent can afford $50,000+ a year for ABA.
Not every child is eligible for insurance coverage through Ryan's Law.
And not every parent can afford the insurance deductibles and co-payments (when their child is eligible for services through Ryan's Law).
It's NOT too late!

Please, visit the following website, follow the simple instructions, and send your personal message to your state representative and senator:

http://www.autismad vocate.org

You just answer a few fill-in-the- blank questions, press a button, and our web site will send a unique and personalized e-mail to your legislators. That's all. It should only take you a few minutes. Best of all, you don't have to search through http://www.scstateh ouse.net to find your legislators because the system automatically detects them from your mailing address.

By doing this, you can give hundreds of children living with autism in South Carolina an opportunity to bridge the developmental gaps with their same-age, typically developing peers -- and a chance to live independently, pursue meaningful careers and relationships, enjoy self-determination and self-sufficiency, and experience full inclusion and integration in society.

Thank you for your help.

Sincerely,
Chris Landrum
Proud father of a six-year-old son with autism
http://www.autismad vocate.org

Click on the link above, for more information.

Fine Balance: Class Of Spinal Cord Neurons Makes Sure That Sides Of Body Don't Get Ahead Of One Other

ScienceDaily (Oct. 18, 2008) — Once a toddler has mastered the art of walking, it seems to come naturally for the rest of her life. But walking and running require a high degree of coordination between the left and right sides of the body. Now researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have shown how a class of spinal cord neurons, known as V3 neurons, makes sure that one side of the body doesn't get ahead of the other.

The findings, published in the Oct. 9 issue of Neuron, mark an important milestone in understanding the neural circuitry that coordinates walking movements, one of the main obstacles in developing new treatments for spinal cord injuries. In addition to establishing a balance between both sides of the body, they found that the V3 neurons ensure that the stepping rhythm is robust and well-organized.

"In the case of cervical spinal cord injuries, the spinal network that drives your limbs and allows you to walk is still there but no longer receives appropriate activating inputs from the brain." says Martyn Goulding, Ph.D., a professor in the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, who led the study. "The fact that the V3 neurons are important for generating a robust locomotor rhythm makes them good candidates for efforts aimed at therapeutic intervention after spinal cord injury."

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