The brain is the final frontier for medicine. The brain industry will be truly revolutionary and provide healthcare with breakthrough innovations that will change the face of medicine forever. Scientists and Inventors will come up with brain based innovations that will treat and cure brain diseases and illnesses like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Epilepsy and others.

Moreover, scientists and inventor will also revolutionize healthcare by discovering how to use the brain to treat and cure a wide range of diseases and illnesses in the entire human body – not just those that directly effect the brain.

My blog will cover the brain industry in depth and my goal is to provide the information we all need so we all play a role in conquering the final frontier for medicine – the Brain.

Feel free to contact me at michael@braininvestor.com

This post was submitted by Michael Neuvirth .

Systemic chemotherapy has been relatively ineffective in the treatment of malignant brain tumors even though systemic chemotherapy drugs are small molecules that can readily extravasate across the porous blood-brain tumor barrier of malignant brain tumor microvasculature. Small molecule systemic chemotherapy drugs maintain peak blood concentrations for only minutes, and therefore, do not accumulate to therapeutic concentrations within individual brain tumor cells. The physiologic upper limit of pore size in the blood-brain tumor barrier of malignant brain tumor microvasculature is approximately 12 nanometers. Spherical nanoparticles ranging between 7 nm and 10 nm in diameter maintain peak blood concentrations for several hours and are sufficiently smaller than the 12 nm physiologic upper limit of pore size in the blood-brain tumor barrier to accumulate to therapeutic concentrations within individual brain tumor cells. Therefore, nanoparticles bearing chemotherapy that are within the 7 to 10 nm size range can be used to deliver therapeutic concentrations of small molecule chemotherapy drugs across the blood-brain tumor barrier into individual brain tumor cells. The initial therapeutic efficacy of the Gd-G5-doxorubicin dendrimer, an imageable nanoparticle bearing chemotherapy within the 7 to 10 nm size range, has been demonstrated in the orthotopic RG-2 rodent malignant glioma model. Herein I discuss this novel strategy to improve the effectiveness of systemic chemotherapy for the treatment of malignant brain tumors and the therapeutic implications thereof.

This post was submitted by Dr Hemant Sarin.

The report by EnteroMedics CEO Mark Knudson that an unanticipated therapeutic effect in the control arm of that company’s recent Empower study may have been the reason the trial failed to reach its efficacy endpoints [see article, in Neurotech Business Report, January 2010] is just the latest example of how failure to fully consider the control arm of a clinical trial has led to serious financial harm. In our view, the technology behind EnteroMedics’ vagus nerve block therapy is still very promising, though the failed trial decimated the company’s market capitalization and put its future in jeopardy.

As we all recall, Northstar Neuroscience experienced a similar financial ruin when its Everest trial for stroke recovery failed to meet its primary endpoints. In that trial, the results would have been profoundly better had the subjects in the treatment arm who failed to receive a threshold dose of cortical stimulation been counted in the control arm. In both cases, very promising neurotechnology therapies—not to mention millions of dollars in investor and shareholder financing—were sacrificed to the inadequate consideration of who’s actually receiving the therapy versus who’s not.

This loss of control has affected other neurotechnology companies struggling to design a randomized, double-blind clinical trial. And for manufacturers of implanted neurotechnology devices, this process is far more complicated than for drug trials that use a sugar pill for control. Make no mistake, the management of both Northstar and EnteroMedics bear the responsibility for proceeding with their clinical trials without fully understanding the therapeutic regimen for their devices. But it is worth exploring the concept of a randomized control trial for an implanted device in the overall context of evidence-based medicine.

Particularly when it comes to disorders such as pain or depression, where subjective reports from the patient are all we have to go on, the notion of placebo effect becomes somewhat cloudy. To some researchers, the placebo effect is itself a form of neuromodulation—and we understand its mechanism of action about as well as we understand the mechanism of certain drugs or device interventions such as ECT. If a new therapy can reliably and consistently elicit the placebo effect—whatever that is—why should that be discarded? All the patient cares about is feeling better. If that feeling emanates in part from some subconscious recognition that an internal device may be pumping out juice, should the individual be deprived of an effective therapy?

Whether we’re talking about neurological disorders with objectively measurable deficits like stroke or epilepsy, or disorders like pain and depression with more fuzzy indices, the bottom line is alleviating suffering and restoring function. The goal of true evidence-based medicine should be to identify therapies that work for a given population, not to discard new effective treatments because the control arm could not be controlled.

This post was submitted by James Cavuoto .

As Arthur Schopenhauer said (1788-1860) “There are three steps in the revelation of any truth: first, it is ridiculed; in the second, resisted; in the third, it is considered self-evident”. Considering telepsychiatry and according to our experience, we have no doubts about that telepsychiatry is an adequate vehicle for mental health care that increases access to care and user satisfaction constituting an effective means of delivering mental health services to psychiatric outpatients living in remote areas with limited resources with clinical efficacy indistinguishable of the corresponding one to face-to-face psychiatric treatment. Nevertheless,. we had to face significant technical and interpersonal barriers and deeply embedded professional constructs about the nature and practice of therapeutic relationships were challenged. The lessons learned along our telepsychiatry experience will be presented with the aim that could be useful for future telepsychiatric developments.

This post was submitted by Prof. De Las Cuevas .

The new brain concept is based on two discoveries: the discovery of the neural network computational principle and the discovery of the generic functional organization of neural centers like Central Pattern Generators (CPGs) that control automatic motor behaviors in animals. The concept shows why classical conceptual views of the brain are not capable of providing an adequate explanation of brain-initiated normal and pathological behaviors. The ability of the new conceptual brain model to explain brain mechanisms of normal and pathological behaviors was already demonstrated through numerous examples including the cerebellum, cortico-basal ganglia-thalamocortical loops, and mechanisms of parkinsonian symptoms. It also explains why partial lesioning of various basal ganglia structures or their chronic electrical stimulation known as deep brain stimulation alleviate parkinsonian symptoms.

The new concept helps to better understand what is achievable and what is hype in Neurotechnology.

Visit http://neurallaws.com or read the recent article for more information. I am waiting for your comments and questions.

PubMed link to the recent article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19409059?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1

This post was submitted by Konstantin Baev.

We propose this blog to debate different area of neuropsychologic rehabilitation in patients with brain diseases. It is suggested that measures of executive functioning and verbal memory were related to measures of functional outcome. Furthermore, cognitive dysfunction can affects strongly quality of live after discharge. Also neuropsychologic disorders can affect the progress of rehabilitation for other diseases.

This post was submitted by Dr Anis Jellad .

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) is implicated in the physiologic control of a number of functions such as regulation of appetite, control of mood and body temperature, stress responses and activity of H-PA axis. The neurotransmitter has long been regarded to play an important role in the pathophysiology and treatment of a number of psychiatric illnesses such as depression, anxiety, anorexia and bulimia nervosa. An interaction of serotonin with other neurotransmitters has been shown to extend therapeutics in the treatment of schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and addiction. Evidence also supports a role of serotonin in cognition and memory function. The aim of this session is to advance our knowledge on the role of serotonin in the control of physiologic functions and extend therapeutics in various neuropsychiatric illnesses.

This post was submitted by Prof Darakhshan Jabeen Haleen.

Constant exposure to low levels of natural background radiation from different materials present in the environment is a matter of concern for human health. Four decades of genomic, cellular, animal and human data have shown that low-dose ionizing radiation stimulates positive genomic and cellular responses associated with effective disease prevention.

In 1936, NAS report and WWII. Data and research showed that low dose radiation is not, can not be, harmful, and even beneficial, demonstrating “radiation hormesis,” Shu-Zheng Liu, et al 2000, show that low-dose radiation in whole organisms enhances numerous biological responses that are highly significant to health. A. Richards in Science documented the consistent and opposite physiological effects between low and high doses radiation responses.

Biological effects of low dose radiation have been under investigation, and it has been demonstrated that living organisms have great capacity to respond against radiation. Radiation adaptive response, bystander effects, genomic instability and genetic susceptibility are the most well known examples. This adaptive response seems to be the manifestation of a protective effect by modulating the signaling pathways, by activating number of genes different from those activated by high radiation doses that may reduce risk at very low doses.

In our study we looked into the radiation neuroprotective and neuroregenerative responses in terms of levels of lipid peroxidative damage, detoxifying enzymes, EEGs and histological sections etc in the brain of this experimental post traumatic epileptic model of rat.

All my studies showed the protective effect of low dose gamma-ray irradiation in this model which mimics human epilepsy.

This post was submitted by Dr Varsha Sharma.