Neurology Center

Allegedly, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown takes a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOi) antidepressant.That's the rumor, based on the rumored fact that he is unable to eat certain things, notably cheese and Chianti wine. These are foods rich in tyramine, a chemical that's normally harmless, but can be toxic in people taking MAOis. So, if Brown is indeed on a Chianti-and-cheeseless regime, he almost...

Continuing the theme of interesting single case reports, I was pleased to see a paper about brain activity in someone who suffered a panic attack in the middle of an fMRI brain scan experiment.The unfortunate volunteer, a 46 year old woman, was taking part in an experiment looking at restless-leg syndrome. The scan lasted 40 minutes, and everything was going smoothly until quite near the end, when...

A reader drew my attention to this gem from Craig Bennett, who blogs at prefrontal.org:Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correctionThis is a poster presented by Bennett and colleagues at this year's Human Brain Mapping conference. It's about fMRI scanning on a dead fish, specifically a salmon. They put the...

Mental illness: how common is it? A popular answer is one in four - 25% of people will experience it at least once in their lives. In fact, most published research suggests that the lifetime rate is higher, around 30-50%, in Western nations.That's a lot. But even this may be a serious underestimate, according to a new paper, How common are common mental disorders? The study compared the proportion...

According to a new paper in the prestigous journal PNAS, High-field MRI reveals an acute impact on brain function in survivors of the magnitude 8.0 earthquake in China.The earthquake, you'll remember, happened on 12th May last year in central China. Over 60,000 people died. The authors of this paper took 44 earthquake survivors, and 32 control volunteers who had not experienced the disaster.The volunteers...

One of the limitations of antidepressants is that they don't always work. Worse, they don't work in an unpredictable way. Some people benefit from some drugs, and others don't, but there's no way of knowing in advance what will happen in any particular case - or of telling which pill is right for which person.As a result, drug treatment for depression generally involves starting with a cheap medication...