Zipped earth

In order to have a rather relativational thought about our place in cosmic universe. Seed gives it a 6o sec run.

Plastic Logic: great for New Years gift

The real guitar hero

Gift for Darwin's 200 th Birthday

The Missing Link. Great for Darwin

Huang Hilbert

A New Method for Non-linear and Non-stationary Time Series Analysis: The Hilbert Spectral Analysis Norden E. Huang

Free the Science

30 Neuroscience journals Free access (untill May 30 2009) Thanks SPRINGER

SCS for parkinson

Alleviating Parkinsons through deep brain stimulation from Science News on Vimeo.

DBS Light

Switching parts of the brain on and of like a light switch. Literally !

esearch Articles Optical Deconstruction of Parkinsonian Neural Circuitry Viviana Gradinaru,1,2* Murtaza Mogri,1* Kimberly R. Thompson,1 Jaimie M. Henderson,3 Karl Deisseroth1,4 Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a therapeutic option for intractable neurological and psychiatric disorders, including Parkinson's disease and major depression. Because of the heterogeneity of brain tissues where electrodes are placed, it has been challenging to elucidate the relevant target cell types or underlying mechanisms of DBS. We used optogenetics and solid-state optics to systematically drive or inhibit an array of distinct circuit elements in freely moving parkinsonian rodents and found that therapeutic effects within the subthalamic nucleus can be accounted for by direct selective stimulation of afferent axons projecting to this region. In addition to providing insight into DBS mechanisms, these results demonstrate an optical approach for dissection of disease circuitry and define the technological toolbox needed for systematic deconstruction of disease circuits by selectively controlling individual components.

Not a simple minded song

Santana & Clapton: a legendary performance

Enters Santana to tickle Your neural networks

Wally Floyd

A classic

Springtime at Springers

A big achievement. Bravo Springer. Arriving Spring this year. Should be soon. Feel the attractor force ?

Romantic in red

one more

More MYKOM

The Edge of Chaos

Do we value ERP's and EEG in Belgium ?

Probably not, as the KCE (federal centra of execellence and knowledge) has judged those techniques to be of not enough EBM value to grant them further reimbursement. Exit EP and ERP. Hans Berger may turn in his Jena grave but it's not sure that this will change their harsh ruling. Although they claim to have found no evidence for any diagnostic value, all scientific developments go against such statements. So we have a clash of opinion here that will need further democratic (no censorship please) as well as scientific debate. As starters a copy from the ECNS proceedings 2008 (Frankfurt) 11. Evidence Based Electrophysiology of Neurobehavioral Disorders Chair: Moore N, Johnston City, TN Evidence Based Medicine Evaluation of Electrophysiological Studies of the Anxiety Disorders Clark CR, Moores KA, Penrose R, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia Galletly CA, Ash DJ, McFarlane AC, University of Adelaide, Australia We provide an evidenced based medicine review of the use of electrophysiology in the anxiety disorders. It highlights functional similarities across the disorders and identifies patterns that differentiate disorder classifications. Electrophysiological measures offer reliable and objective clinical indicators of brain dysfunction within individuals, providing biomarkers for the improvement of diagnostic specificity and for informing on treatment decisions and prognostic assessments. Common to most anxiety disorders is a basal instability in cortical arousal, as reflected in measures of quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG). Resting EEG measures tend to correlate with symptom sub-patterns and be exacerbated by condition-specific stimulation. Also common are condition-specific difficulties with sensory gating and attentional control. These are clearly evident from event-related potential (ERP) measures of information processing in OCD, PTSD, PD, GAD and the phobias. Other ERP measures clearly differentiate the disorders, but with considerable variation across studies in relation to inclusion and exclusion criteria, medication status and control group selection. Historically, study numbers have tended to preclude the derivation of reliable diagnostic biomarker patterns but this is now being overcome with the development of databases of brain and cognition function, and the potential for inclusion of electrophysiological measures in disorder classification as foreshadowed for DSM-V. Evidence-Based Medicine and Electrophysiology in Schizophrenia Galderisi S, Mucci A, Volpe U, University of Naples SUN, Naples, Italy Boutros N, Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, USA The present contribution focuses on qualitative and quantitative EEG and P300 abnormalities as diagnostic tests for schizophrenia. The PubMed clinical query was used; key-words were schizophrenia and EEG/P3/P300. Inclusion criteria were: a diagnosis of schizophrenia confirmed by DSM-III/ICD-9 criteria or later editions; the inclusion of both a schizophrenia and a healthy control group; qualitative or spectral EEG findings or amplitude measures for P3. The included studies were reviewed to verify results homogeneity and the presence of information needed for systematic review and meta-analysis. Studies meeting all requirements were classified according to the Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine (OCEBM) criteria. No standard/clinical EEG study was OCEBM level 3b or better. For spectral EEG most studies qualified as level 4, and 25% as level 3b or better. An increase of delta and theta activity in patients was reported by most studies, while negative or discrepant findings were reported in less than 5% of them. For P3 amplitude reduction, 63% of the studies qualified as level 3b or better. Only 6.8% reported negative findings and none reported opposite results. Moderate effect sizes were found for spectral EEG delta and theta increase, and a large effect size for P300 amplitude reduction. Evidence-Based Evaluation of Diagnostic Accuracy of EEG in Dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment Jelic V, Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital-Huddinge, Stockholm, Sweden Consistent reports on the validity of the EEG method in dementia work-up and an evidence based consensus on appropriateness of this method in the initial evaluation of patients with suspected cognitive disorder and dementia is missing. Using an evidence-based technique we searched for articles on diagnostic accuracy of spontaneous EEG in dementia disorders published from 1980 until June 2008. Forty-six articles were retrieved that strictly satisfied inclusion criteria. Figures on sensitivity and specificity across the studies varied widely, positive likelihood ratio in studies reporting classification accuracies between patients with Alzheimer’s disease and normal aging ranged between 2.3 and 38.5, and diagnostic odds ratios consequently showed large variations between 7 and 219. Although reported indexes of accuracy are in general high they are obtained and optimised on different clinical populations with variable sample size and disease severity, have large confidence intervals and results, therefore, cannot be extrapolated to other clinical populations. Joint effort of preferably multicentre studies using uniform standards should develop optimised methods, investigate added diagnostic value of EEG in clinically established dementia diagnosis and, more importantly, predictive utility of EEG in mild cognitive impairment and questionable dementia.

reversing fate

HDAC2 negatively regulates memory formation and synaptic plasticity p55 Histone acetylation has been implicated in learning and memory. Neuron-specific overexpression of histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2), but not HDAC1, is shown to decrease memory formation in a rodent model. This encourages development and testing of HDAC2-selective inhibitors for human diseases associated with memory impairment. Ji-Song Guan, Stephen J. Haggarty, Emanuela Giacometti, Jan-Hermen Dannenberg, Nadine Joseph, Jun Gao, Thomas J. F. Nieland, Ying Zhou, Xinyu Wang, Ralph Mazitschek, James E. Bradner, Ronald A. DePinho, Rudolf Jaenisch & Li-Huei Tsai Guan, J., Haggarty, S., Giacometti, E., Dannenberg, J., Joseph, N., Gao, J., Nieland, T., Zhou, Y., Wang, X., Mazitschek, R., Bradner, J., DePinho, R., Jaenisch, R., & Tsai, L. (2009). HDAC2 negatively regulates memory formation and synaptic plasticity Nature, 459 (7243), 55-60 DOI: 10.1038/nature07925

Copperline

Sweet....

KCE on EEG/EP/ERP

A french reaction full of wisdom and sanity by a top domain expert.

FINDERS KEEPERS

Art and mental Illness

Welcome at this interesting site offering decent food of thought for those mindfull brain explorers preparing to dwell on the edge of chaos (where creativity and insanity often linger close together).

What mouse can mean to man

Inhibit HBAC2 and increase experience and learning based neural plasticity. A rescue plan for the dooming amyloid crisis ? That is what the neuroscience team of Picower at MIT thinks and reported in nature.

Read more....

Surf the brainwaves electric

Will lasergunning your brain help You ?

In depression some neural networks are hypofunctional (fi DLPFC) while others (fi amygdala) are overactive. Trying to rebalance all this has been done with ECT, rTMS and even deep brain stimulation (BA 25). But now there is a new kid on the block...

red meat is not bad for Your health, bluish green meat is ...

This is a post about reason, logic, EBM and statistics. A must read for everybody....

Music is neuroscience to....

van harte opgedragen aan een fijn mens : mr M. D M

Touching

Touching

A brainiacs brain ?

ling braini

Now You see it .. but not if cloaked

gamma in BCI

PERSONAL COMMENT There is little doubt that gamma could be an important trigger for signaling many BCI events. However one must take into account that 98% of the power of the EEG signal is below 30 Hz. gamma account for 1 or 2 ùV and this is the hardware noise limit for a lot amplifiers. Many amplifiers even then only reach 2 ùV (inputs interconnected) output at low sampling frequency (128 Hz) and that is insufficient to study 50-80 hz range. I wonder how the authors solved this or can we expect to see the birth of a super amplifier ?

Computational Neuroscience

Serious stuff...

The BMI of BCI

Nice demo movies here.

A pythonesk development

Is Python on its way to become a de facto standard in CN (Computational neuroscience) ? Some people think so and they are even organizing a symposium to port their message to the audiences. You will have to go to berlin to hear them. Bruno at the GUISLAIN group is already on that wagon and maybe it will drive him straight to Berlin ?

Workshop 'Python in Neuroscience'

When
22.07.2009 12:00 to 23.07.2009 12:00
Add event to calendar
vCal iCal

July 22/23, 2009, Berlin, Germany

After the CNS Conference 2009, Eilif Muller, Jens Kremkow, Andrew Davison and Romain Brette are organizing a workshop on

Python developments for the application in neuroscience.

The workshop contains tutorials and demo sessions. The detailed programm can be downloaded from the CNS website.

Moreover, several sessions with 5 minutes 'lightning talks' (s. Wikipedia) are planned. Proposals for lightning talks can be submitted by April 30 to Romain Brette.

The workshop is supported by the EU project FACETS and the Bernstein Center Freiburg.

Information about all workshops planned after the CNS conference 2009 can be found here.