You know the word…it’s right there…on the tip of your tongue…and…it’s gone again. Argh! Struggling to think of a certain word is something everyone encounters. For a specific group of dementia patients, however, this is a daily battle and often involves words for common household objects previously well remembered (e.g kettle). Semantic dementia is a disease that attacks language in […]
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Getting lost in shopping malls, leaving doors unlocked and difficulty remembering what you ate last night are situations that caregivers and patients with Alzheimer’s disease know well and have to deal with every day. Yet, what would you think, if instead of getting lost, someone had trouble finding the right word? Would you still call this Alzheimer’s disease?
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No two strokes are the same. How a person is affected by a stroke is dependent on a range of factors such as the type of stroke, the part of the brain damaged, and their health before the stroke. Many stroke survivors have trouble manipulating and holding objects, and the way people hold and manipulate objects is something NeuRA’s Dr […]
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Evolution is the gradual development of something into a more complex or better form. I witness this everyday as a paediatric neurologist: A newborn is vulnerable and fully dependent on its parents and during childhood movements become smooth and an infant learns to stand, walk and then run. Compared to development in other species, human children take a long time […]
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Did you know that the brain contains its own set of chemicals that act like chemicals found in cannabis? You may have heard of endorphins (not to be confused with the Australian electronic musician), opiate-like chemicals made by our bodies that help us control pain and feel good after exercise. Well, the body also makes its own cannabis-like chemicals, called […]
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We are all exposed to environmental sources of lead, particularly from the combustion of lead-based fuels, manufacture of lead-acid batteries, crushing and smelting of lead, and the rapidly expanding technology industry. And as the culturally-inclined are aware, the use of lead-based pigments facilitated the most inspiring paintwork during the renaissance era.
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Why are adolescent males at the highest risk for schizophrenia onset? And what is it about adolescence that makes male brains more vulnerable?
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It has been assumed that all muscles and their tendons act independently of each other and do not transmit force directly to adjacent muscle-tendon units. In other words, it is assumed each muscle-tendon unit acts as an independent force generator.
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A NeuRA study recently investigated how different types of dementia affect the ability to perform everyday tasks. The focus was on progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) and logopenic nonfluent aphasia (LPA) – two dementias that lead to similar problems in language (at least to the untrained ear, not so according to specific language tests). Under the microscope these dementias look very different: […]
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Using wireless telemetry we are focussing on studying how and why stroke therapy works, rather than just measuring how effective stroke therapy can be. Wireless telemetry refers to wireless, machine-to-machine communication. In our context, we use wireless telemetry to record physiological signals to measure how the body responds during stroke therapy.
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