Microbleeds after head injury may worsen outcomes

Researchers have discovered that traumatic microbleeds, which appear as small, dark lesions on MRI scans after head injury, are a form of injury to brain blood vessels, and may predict worse outcomes, an advance which may lead to new treatment protocol for such injuries.

The study,  involved 439 adult participants who experienced head injury, and were treated in the emergency department.

The researchers, including those from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US, said that the patients underwent MRI scans within 48 hours of injury, and again during four subsequent visits.

The participants also completed behavioral and outcome questionnaires, the study noted.

The findings revealed that 31 per cent of all the subjects had evidence of microbleeds on their brain scans.

Nearly 60 per cent of the participants with severe head injury showed microbleeds, and another 27 per cent exhibited mild cases, the researchers said.

According to the researchers, the microbleeds appeared as either linear streaks or dotted, also referred to as punctate, lesions.

The majority of patients who had microbleeds had both types, the study noted.

The study also revealed that the frontal lobes of the brain were most likely to show microbleeds.
"While we know that damage to brain cells can be devastating, the exact impact of this vascular injury following head trauma is uncertain and requires further study," said study co-author.

The researchers noted that the patients with microbleeds were more likely to have a greater level of disability compared to patients without microbleeds.

According to the researchers, microbleeds following brain injury may be a potential biomarker for identifying which patients may be candidates for treatments targeting vascular injury.

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Drawing Better Than Writing for Retaining Memory For Older Adults

Drawing can help you better retain new information than re-writing notes or passively looking at images, a study has found.

Scientists have found that older adults could enhance their memory by taking up drawing, even if they are not good at it.

"We found that drawing enhanced memory in older adults more than other known study techniques. We’re really encouraged by these results and are looking into ways that it can be used to help people with dementia, who experience rapid declines in memory and language function." 

For the study, the researchers asked both young people and older adults to do a variety of memory-encoding techniques and then tested their recall.

They believe that drawing led to better memory when compared with other study techniques because it incorporated multiple ways of representing the information -- visual, spatial, verbal, semantic and motoric.

"Drawing improves memory across a variety of tasks and populations, and the simplicity of the strategy means that it can be used in many settings." said a professor.

As part of the studies, the researchers compared different types of memory techniques in aiding retention of a set of words, in a group of undergraduate students and a group of senior citizens.

Participants would either encode each word by writing it out, by drawing it, or by listing physical attributes related to each item.

Later on after performing each task, memory was assessed. Both groups showed better retention when they used drawing rather than writing to encode the new information, and this effect was especially large in older adults.

Retention of new information typically declines as people age, due to deterioration of critical brain structures involved in memory such as the hippocampus and frontal lobes.

In contrast, we know that visuospatial processing regions of the brain, involved in representing images and pictures, are mostly intact in normal aging, and in dementia.

"We think that drawing is particularly relevant for people with dementia because it makes better use of brain regions that are still preserved, and could help people experiencing cognitive impairment with memory function. Our findings have exciting implications for therapeutic interventions to help dementia patients hold on to valuable episodic memories throughout the progression of their disease." 

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Dyslexia may be prevented by brain training activities

Effective activities could be used to train the brain to prevent future disorders such as dyslexia, scientists say.

Over the years, several studies have shown that the the brain is able to naturally adjust the frequency of its waves with the oscillations or the rhythm of what it listens at each moment.

However, little was known so far of the consequences of the effect of brain synchronisation, also known as brain-entrainment, in brain regions directly related to language processing.

Researchers  studied this aspect and has thoroughly analysed the brain synchronisation of 72 individuals.

According to a researcher, the experiment has shown that the synchronisation with speech is more intense when the brain listens to low frequency waves - those related to the accent, tones and intonation of speech.

The study showed that this synchronisation results in a direct activation of the brain regions related to language processing, as is the case of the Broca area, a section located in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere and involved in the production of the same.

In previous work, researchers found that children with dyslexia show a weak synchronisation with low frequency bands, and therefore, a poor activation of the regions related to language processing.

The researcher said that therapeutic interventions focused on language learning can be developed during childhood by stimulating low frequency auditory components and thus obtain a clearer idea of the sounds that make up the language.

"For example, brain synchronisation can be measured while a child with dyslexia is listening and giving a reward if it stimulates more synchronisation with the low frequency band," said the researcher. "It can help those who are out of sync to pay more attention to the tones, accents and intonations of speech," she said.

This could be applicable to tasks with speech therapists, developing specific interventions to synchronise with low frequency speech.

"With repeated training sessions we can help children with language delay to recover the mechanisms of attention," the researcher said.

The researchers conducted two studies with 35 and 37 individuals respectively; these individuals had to listen to different sentences for about six minutes.

Through magneto encephalography (MEG), a non-invasive technique that allows accurately recording and analysing the neuronal activity of the brain while the participants perform a task as simple as listening to talk, the brain regions that were synchronised with the different frequency bands were analysed.

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Quickly relieve headaches and migraines

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Why not try a natural way to relieve pain without having to resort to a painkiller? Acupressure is an effective way to do so in 5 minutes.
There is a Shiatsu point in your hand that is good at relieving pain in the frontal lobe. This spot is located in the webbing between your index finger and thumb, on the highest muscle point very close to where the bones meet. Using your thumb and index finger, press hard on the muscle from both sides, placing the thumb on the back of your hand and the forefinger underneath.
This technique can also be used with shoulder pain, toothaches and labor pain.

Ice-cream & headache?

The pista ice cream proudly sporting the green wafer looks delicious. It is rock solid — a Himalayan peak in miniature. A quick spoonful into the mouth — aaaaaah! A sharp, shooting pain travels to the head! One moment, I'm enjoying a scoop of ice cream, the next, my mind is numb and my face, scrunched in agony.


You've had the dreaded ice-cream headache, right? There you are, biting into an ice candy or sipping a milk shake, and suddenly you are hit with the most awful headache! But don't blame the candy, it's not acting alone. The roof of your mouth, your nerves and blood vessels are involved too!

Change in temperature

“This happens because of the sudden change in temperature at the roof,” explained Dr. L. P. Mohan, dental surgeon. “In medical terms, there's vasodilatation, (dilatation of blood vessels) triggering local pain receptors causing prostaglandins to be released, which cause pain, sensitivity and inflammation at the site of release. This localised pain is taken up by the trigeminal nerve to send signals to the brain. Since the trigeminal nerve senses pain from the entire face through its many branches, the brain interprets the signal of the brain freeze to be coming from the forehead, hence causing discomfort in that region. The attack is called Spenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia — neuro being nerves, algia being pain. Spenopalatine ganglia are the nerves of the palate.” Phew! All of this is a mouthful, so let's stick with “brain freeze!”

Joseph Hulihan put it this way: when something cold touches the roof of the mouth, an alarm goes off. The “cold” signal tells the brain to keep itself warm, and the rush of blood builds up pressure that can lead to a headache. There is dilation of blood vessels, caused by a nerve centre located above the roof of your mouth — when this nerve centre gets cold, it seems to over-react.

The “delicious” pain was unravelled by researchers from Harvard University, the University of Ireland, and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. Volunteers were given ice water (no ice-cream!), and a trans-cranial Doppler measured the rush of blood to the anterior cerebral artery, the part of the brain that funnels oxygen to the frontal lobe.

Funny why it should be called brain freeze. The pain associated with brain freezes is the result of rapid cooling and warming, causing your blood vessels to contract and then dilate quickly. Your body looks at the rapid temperature change in your mouth as an indication of a dangerously cold environment, and so your blood cells contract to conserve body heat. As the substance is swallowed, your blood cells return to their previous size and it is this oscillation that is so painful. If you've noticed, a brain freeze starts after you've swallowed your bite!

Typically, the pain strikes within 10 seconds of the “ice cream attack” and lasts for about 20 seconds (It feels like much longer!). But it may spread to the teeth, warns Dr. Mohan. “Though the teeth are not directly involved in the brain freeze mechanism, the sudden exposure to cold may affect teeth,” he said. “The teeth may go in for a thermal shock — a sharp pain. This affects the vital pulp tissue lying beneath the enamel and dentine. You get ‘teeth freeze.'”

All this is not going to make you swear off ice-cream, no way! You don't have to feel helpless either. “Stop cold food from touching the roof of your mouth,” says Dr. Mohan. “Quickly warm the roof of your mouth with your tongue. (It eases the surge of blood flow to your brain.) Better still, avoid extremely cold food. Or choose a slightly warmer environment. This will reduce the impact of cold food.” And best of all, eat cold foods slowly. Give your “oral environment” time to get used to change in temperature gradually, while you relish the creaminess and the flavour.

CHILL PILLS

* Brain freeze goes away on its own. It's not dangerous and you are not ill.

* Let the bite/sip warm on your tongue before you it touches the roof of your mouth.

* Feel an ice-cream headache coming on? Take a break from the cold food for a minute. Your palate will warm up a bit. Enjoy the rest of your chilly dessert.

* Only a third of people experience brain freeze from eating something cold.

* Most people are susceptible to a related headache from sudden exposure to a very cold climate.