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The Dana Foundation released Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts, and the Brain, its newest free education resource. The book, the culmination of a summit sponsored by The Johns Hopkins University School of Education's Neuro-Education Initiative, focuses on the convergence of neuroscientific research and teaching and learning, with an emphasis on the arts.
 

 Education and brain experts discuss their experiences, challenges, and potential next steps to allow for the crossover from classroom to lab and lab to classroom. The concerns and hopes of those working in the field are presented in a summary of the roundtable discussions that served as the centerpiece of the summit.

Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts, and the Brain is available free by written request on institutional letterhead. Please make certain your request contains a complete telephone number-including area code-and a full street address. Requests should be mailed or faxed to:

Johanna Goldberg
Dana Foundation
745 Fifth Avenue, Suite 900
New York, NY 10151
Fax: (212) 317-8721

You may also e-mail your request to: jgoldberg@dana.org. Please include your institutional and mailing information.

The book is available online at http://www.dana.org/news/publications/publication.aspx?id=23964.
 

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According to an AP poll 54% of Americans favor limiting their right to recover from doctors and hospitals for their mistakes.  Nevada passed the Keep Our Doctors in Nevada bill in 2004.

The AP poll found that 54 percent of Americans favor making it harder to sue doctors and hospitals for mistakes taking care of patients, while 32 percent are opposed. The rest are undecided or don't know.

Support for limits on malpractice lawsuits cuts across political lines, with 58 percent of independents and 61 percent of Republicans in favor. Democrats are more divided. Still, 47 percent said they favor making it harder to sue, while 37 percent are opposed.

The survey was conducted by Stanford University with the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

This study can be seen here.

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A presentation by the American Heart Association's (AHA) annual Scientific Sessions in Orlando revealed the pooling results from 21 studies, involving 622,381 men and women, to conclude that the risk of stroke for those with migraines is 2.3 times those without.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have affirmed that migraine headaches are associated with more than twofold higher chances of the most common kind of stroke: those occurring when blood supply to the brain is suddenly cut off by the buildup of plaque or a blood clot.

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A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) promises to improve diagnosis and monitoring of Alzheimer's disease.  Scientists at the University of California, San Diego have developed a fast and accurate method for quantifying subtle, sub-regional brain volume loss using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). 

The general pattern of brain atrophy resulting from Alzheimer's disease has long been known through autopsy studies, but exploiting this knowledge toward accurate diagnosis and monitoring of the disease has only recently been made possible by improvements in computational algorithms that automate identification of brain structures with MRI. The new methods described in the study provide rapid identification of brain sub-regions combined with measures of change in these regions across time. The methods require at least two brain scans to be performed on the same MRI scanner over a period of several months. The new research shows that changes in the brain's memory regions, in particular a region of the temporal lobe called the entorhinal cortex, offer sensitive measures of the early stages of the disease.
 

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Every once in a while I come across an uplifting story about a victim of severe traumatic brain injury making significant recovery.  I came across this story while perusing the Chicago Tribune, by Lisa Pevtzow

Special to the Tribune

November 20, 2009
 

Chicago Police Sgt. Mike Dineen should have died.

That's what his doctors said after Dineen suffered a massive brain injury in a still-unexplained, off-duty incident on New Year's Day. 
 

On Jan. 1 Dineen was found in a parking lot on the southwest side of Chicago, barely alive with the back of his skull partially caved in. Dineen has no memory of what happened and has no idea of why he was there, although it's believed he may have slipped on a patch of ice or fallen down a flight of stairs, he said. He had his wallet, so he does not believe he was the victim of a crime.

Dineen was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, where his face was so unrecognizable that his parents initially thought they were in the wrong room, said his father, Chuck Dineen, a retired Chicago firefighter. Doctors told them that he would probably die, and if he didn't, he likely would be brain-damaged.
 

Dineen suffered the most severe category of traumatic brain injury, as well as contusions on his lungs, said Stacy McCarty, one of his doctors at the Rehabilitation Institute.

Surgeons at Christ operated on his brain to temporarily remove part of his skull to relieve the pressure and drain the large amount of blood. He spent the next three weeks in a coma, on a ventilator and a feeding tube. When he awoke he was transferred to the Rehabilitation Institute, where he spent a month before transferring to outpatient rehabilitation at its center in Willowbrook.

Dineen, who has been cleared to rejoin the force in a week, was clearly a man happy to be alive.

"When I went to the neurologist two weeks after I woke up from the coma, the doctor said to me, 'It's nice to see you walking and talking, because you were supposed to be dead,' " Dineen said. "I had to go through death to realize how valuable life is."
 

Read more here.

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I remember reading The Butterfly and the Diving Bell some years ago and then seeing the movie last year.  Similarly, an episode of House involved a patient with locked in syndrome.

Here is a real life story of a man, injured in a car accident, who was misdiagnosed in a persistent vegetative state for 23 years.  Doctors relied in part on a frequently over rated diagnostic technique called the Glasgow Coma Scale to conclude that the man was no longer viable.  Newer scanning tests revealed the man's mind was completely normal except for his inability to express himself.

A leading European neurologist has said many cases of brain injury around the world are wrongly diagnosed as 'coma' after discovering that a car-crash victim thought to have been in coma for the past 23 years was conscious all the time.

Steven Laureys, head of the Coma Science Group and Department of Neurology at Liege University Hospital, spoke after writing about the astounding case of Rom Houben, a Belgian who was thought to have slipped into a persistent vegetative state 23 years ago.

The paralysed Houben had no way of letting doctors know that he could hear every word they were saying.

'I dreamed myself away,' Houben, now 46 and able to tap out messages on a computer screen, told the Daily Telegraph. 'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear.'

Doctors in Zolder, Belgium, routinely used the internationally-accepted Glasgow Coma Scale to assess his eye, verbal and motor responses to conclude that his consciousness was 'extinct'.

But he was graded incorrectly each time - until three years ago a re-examination at the University of Liege using new hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally, the paper reported.

Houben, although physically paralysed, was fully aware of what was happening around him.

'Medical advances caught up with him,' said Laureys, whose recently account in a medical paper has brought the case to light.

Laureys plans to use the case to highlight what he considers may be similar examples around the world.

'In Germany alone each year some 100,000 people suffer from severe traumatic brain injury. About 20,000 are followed by a coma of three weeks or longer. Some of them die, others regain health.

'But an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people a year remain trapped in an intermediate stage - they go on living without ever coming back again.'

Although Houben is never likely to leave hospital, he now has a special device above his bed which lets him read books while lying down.

Houben told the Daily Telegraph: 'I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me - it was my second birth.

'I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead.

'All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.'

IANS 2009-11-23 18:30:00

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Here is the latest from Sarah D'Orsie at the Brain Injury Association of America

Health Care Reform Update

This week, The Senate released and began debate on their Health Care Reform leadership measure. As many of you may know, originally, rehabilitation was not included in the Senate Finance bill as a minimum benefit. Due to the lobbying efforts of BIAA, largely supported and funded by our Business and Professional Council, we have been able to ensure that rehabilitation is a part of the minimum benefits package of the final product now being debated in the Senate.

Specifically, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act being considered would:
(Democratic leadership summary)

- Include immediate changes to the way health insurance companies do business to protect consumers from discriminatory practices and provide Americans with better preventive coverage and the information they need to make informed decisions about their health insurance.

-Uninsured Americans with a pre-existing condition will have access to an immediate insurance program to help them avoid medical bankruptcy and retirees will have greater certainty due to reinsurance provisions to help maintain coverage.

-New health insurance Exchanges will make coverage affordable and accessible for individuals and small businesses.

-Insurance companies will be barred from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, health status, and gender.

-Expand eligibility for Medicaid to include all non-elderly Americans with income below 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), with substantial assistance to States for the cost of covering these individuals.

- Make long-term supports and services more affordable for millions of Americans by providing a lifetime cash benefit that will help people with severe disabilities remain in their homes and communities.

- Eliminate lifetime insurance limits in all new individual and group plans for plan years beginning 6 months after enactment.

Today, as the Senate opened a two-day debate on the bill, Congressional Quarterly reported that Majority Leader, Harry Reid is closing in on the 60 votes needed to overcome an anticipated filibuster and bring the measure to the floor. Reid has filed cloture the bill and the vote on the motion to proceed to the bill is expected to occur on Saturday at 8:00 pm.

BIAA will continue to monitor the bill's progress closely as debate continues. Also, documents relating to the Senate leadership bill can be found on BIAA's website under the Health Care Reform Library section:

http://www.biausa.org/policyissues.htm#library
 

Veteran's Health Omnibus Bill

On Thursday, November 19, 2009, The Senate voted to pass a package of veteran's bills (S1963) that included both S. 801 and S. 252, both important Veteran's health care measures supported by BIAA.

The bill would expand services in rural areas and ensure that veterans who are catastrophically disabled or who need emergency care in the community are not charged for those services. It would also authorize VA hospitals to contract with non-VA providers to ensure that our returning service members have access to the care that they so desperately need and deserve.
 

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Pietrzak and colleagues published their study in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Mediates the Relationship Between Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Health and Psychosocial Functioning in Veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 2009;197(10):748-753).

The study, from Yale University, evaluated whether posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) mediated the relationship between mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) and general health ratings, psychosocial functioning, and perceived barriers to receiving mental healthcare 2 years following return from deployment in veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF).

"Compared with respondents who screened negative for MTBI, respondents who screened positive for MTBI were younger, more likely to have PTSD, more likely to report fair/poor overall health and unmet medical and psychological needs, and scored higher on measures of psychosocial difficulties and perceived barriers to mental healthcare. Injuries involving loss of consciousness were associated with greater work-related difficulties and unmet psychological needs. PTSD mediated the relationship between MTBI and all of these outcomes." 

The researchers concluded: "These results underscore the importance of assessing PTSD in OEF/OIF veterans who screen positive for MTBI."

For additional information, contact R.H. Pietrzak, Yale University, School Medical, National Center PTSD, VA Connecticut Healthcare Systems, 950 Campbell Avenue 151E, West Haven, CT 06516, USA.
 

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