Saturday News

Contents of This Week Saturday News ▶︎ January 30th / 2016

• Definition: Neuroregeneration

Neuroregeneration refers to the regrowth or repair of nervous tissues, cells or cell products. Such mechanisms may include generation of new neurons, glia, axons, myelin, or synapses. Neuroregeneration differs between the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and the central nervous system (CNS) by the functional mechanisms and especially the extent and speed. When an axon is damaged, the distal segment undergoes Wallerian degeneration, losing its myelin sheath. The proximal segment can either die by apoptosis or undergo the chromatolytic reaction, which is an attempt at repair. In the CNS, synaptic stripping occurs as glial foot processes invade the dead synapse.

Nervous system injuries affect over 90,000 people every year. It is estimated that spinal cord injuries alone affect 10,000 each year. As a result of this high incidence of neurological injuries, nerve regeneration and repair, a subfield of neural tissue engineering, is becoming a rapidly growing field dedicated to the discovery of new ways to recover nerve functionality after injury. A longer definition comes from Wikipedia. 

• Video: Neuroregeneration
• The Neuroregeneration Program at Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Cell Engineering
• Neurology - Nerve Damage and Regeneration
• WMIF 2015 | Regeneration, Cell Therapy, and Neurocare: Products? Delivery?
• Helping the Body Regrow Nerves - Science Nation
• Nerve Regeneration - Everything You Need To Know - Dr. Nabil Ebraheim
• Paving the Path for Nerve Regeneration
• Project 71 - Microstructure Imaging of Nerve Regeneration Network
• KUSI Interview with Dr. Justin Brown, MD Neurosurgeon on Nerve Regeneration Breakthrough
• Stem Cells and Neuroregeneration

• Headline Blog: Neuroregeneration
• Hypertension Treatment with Renal Nerve Ablation
• Brain Plasticity Will Blow Your Mind
• Oh, What a Feeling!

• Weekly Columnists
• Musing: Clue to Brain Regeneration Discovered in Lab Mice
• Sunday Stroke Survival: An Another Six Million Dollar Word and Stroke Recovery
• Caregiver: Time for a Change
• Jester: A Nun at Hooters
• TED Talks - James Vetch: This is What Happens when you Reply to Spam Email
• Rick Mercer Report: St. Lawrence Market & Cut in Half
• Laid-Back Admin: Comparison of Web Browsers

• XKCD: Possible Undiscovered Planets

• Eclectic Stuff on Wednesday
• If You Have Aides, 3 Things You Have to Remember About Acting Like Your Own Boss, aka YOU'RE in Charge!
• Mental Practice in Stroke
• 50 Shades of Safety
• Every Stroke is Different
• Happy Belated New Year!
• Trendelenburg Gait
• My 800th Post
• Young and Old: do Do You Know What to Do?

• Future Topics in SSTattler

     Saturday News | Future Topic
     --------------+---------------------------------------------

     Feb/27/2016   | Webcomics
     Feb/23/2016   | Spasticity
     Feb/13/2016   | Learning Disability
     Feb/06/2016   | Reading Comprehension
     

Definition: Neuroregeneration

Neuroregeneration From Wikipedia,
     the free encyclopedia

SSTattler: I was / am a beginner at (human) biology at high-school - I had to read this Neuroregeneration for Wikipedia many times but eventually it made sense. If you are a beginner, like me!, read the definitions 1) The central nervous system (CNS) is the part of the nervous system consisting of the brain and spinal cord. The 2) peripheral nervous system (PNS) is the part of the nervous system that consists of the nerves and ganglia on the outside of the brain and spinal cord. Then you can tackle Neuroregeneration... and I think it will make sense!

Neuroregeneration refers to the regrowth or repair of nervous tissues, cells or cell products. Such mechanisms may include generation of new neurons, glia, axons, myelin, or synapses. Neuroregeneration differs between the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and the central nervous system (CNS) by the functional mechanisms and especially the extent and speed. When an axon is damaged, the distal segment undergoes Wallerian degeneration, losing its myelin sheath. The proximal segment can either die by apoptosis or undergo the chromatolytic reaction, which is an attempt at repair. In the CNS, synaptic stripping occurs as glial foot processes invade the dead synapse.

Nervous system injuries affect over 90,000 people every year. It is estimated that spinal cord injuries alone affect 10,000 each year. As a result of this high incidence of neurological injuries, nerve regeneration and repair, a subfield of neural tissue engineering, is becoming a rapidly growing field dedicated to the discovery of new ways to recover nerve functionality after injury. The nervous system is divided into two parts: the central nervous system, which consists of the brain and spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, which consists of cranial and spinal nerves along with their associated ganglia. While the peripheral nervous system has an intrinsic ability for repair and regeneration, the central nervous system is, for the most part, incapable of self-repair and regeneration. There is currently no treatment for recovering human nerve function after injury to the central nervous system. In addition, multiple attempts at nerve re-growth across the PNS-CNS transition have not been successful. There is simply not enough knowledge about regeneration in the central nervous system. In addition, although the peripheral nervous system has the capability for regeneration, much research still needs to be done to optimize the environment for maximum regrowth potential. Neuroregeneration is important clinically, as it is part of the pathogenesis of many diseases, including multiple sclerosis.

Peripheral Nervous System Regeneration

Video: Neuroregeneration

The Neuroregeneration Program at Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Cell Engineering

Published on Mar 27, 2015

Researcher Valina Dawson introduces the Neuroregeneration Program, where scientists study causes and potential treatments for conditions such as Parkinson’s and stroke. For more information, visit Hopkins Medicine - Neuroregeneration.


Standard YouTube License @ Johns Hopkins Medicine

Headline Blog: Neuroregeneration

Definition: Blog (noun). Add new material to or regularly update to a blog. (≃1990s: blog shortening of weblog)

Hypertension Treatment with Renal Nerve Ablation

Bill Yates
Brain Posts

Posted 10th December 2010 

The neuroscience of hypertension covers several important domains.  Untreated hypertension can lead to central nervous complications such as stroke and vascular dementia.  Patients with essential hypertension show hyperactive renal sympathetic nerve outflow.  This produces several effects increasing blood pressure including: stimulation of renin, increased kidney sodium reabsorption and reduced blood flow to the kidney.  The kidney signals the brain areas controlling central sympathethic tone regulation.

Diet, weight loss and pharmacotherapy form the basics for treatment of hypertension.  Despite a variety of drugs with different mechanisms of action many patients fail to achieve satisfactory blood pressure control.  Obviously, new strategies for blood pressure control are needed.

One surgical strategy undergoing study is use of a endovascular cather to interrupt signals from the renal nerves to the kidney.  A recent study published in Lancet (The Sympliciity HTN-2summarized promising results from a randomized clinical trial using renal sympathetic denervation in a group of patients with treatment-resistant hypertension.  The key design elements of the study were:

Brain Plasticity Will Blow Your Mind

Rebecca Dutton
Home After a Stroke

February 6, 2013

New research on brain plasticity will blow your mind.  One amazing finding is that new stem cells are produced in the lateral ventricles of the adult brain (1).  What is even more amazing is how these stem cells migrate from the back of the brain to the olfactory bulb in the front of the brain (2).  Using time lapse imaging scientists have been able to watch stem cells latch onto a blood vessel highway and drag themselves to their destination.  First, brain chemicals push stem cells away from their birth place.  Additional chemicals stop the stem cells from getting off track along the way.  As the cells approach their destination more chemicals pull them in the right direction.

Equally amazing is the fact that new stem cells are produced in the hippocampus that controls memory (2).  Since learning is life-long, it is hard to believe that neuroscientists used to believe that remembering everything we learn can be crammed into the memory cells we were born with.  The adult brain grows thousands of new stem cells in the hippocampus every day (3).  Diffusion tensor imaging allowed scientists to see significant microstructure changes in the hippocampus after two hours of training (4).

Oh, What a Feeling!

Marcelle Greene
Up Stroke

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

My loss of sensation was as concerning as my loss of movement. In the hospital, family members would touch my fingers or toes and ask, "Can you feel this?"

"No."

Not only did I lose sensation in my lower limbs, I could not place them in space. With my eyes closed, I could not tell if my arm rested by my side or in your hands. My perimeter had become fuzzy.

As feeling began to return in those early weeks, I qualified it: There was vibration and pressure, but not touch – no sense of skin against skin or the texture of bed sheets.

Temperature returned during a rehab shower – strange signals from my left leg. My right leg felt hot water. So, this is what hot feels like, I told myself. To this day my left side feels heat more keenly than my right. Hot is insistent.

A different sensation emerged one day as my occupational therapist worked with my arm. Her hands were cold. And so this is what cold feels like, I instructed myself. Cold is subtle – it reveals itself from a distance.

Without looking, I still cannot tell if my fingers are open or curled – grasping an object or empty. To test my sense of touch, I ask my husband to brush a cotton swab beneath my fingertips. With eyes closed, I try to tell which finger he's touching. For the first time last week, (15 months post-stroke), I was finally able to identify each finger correctly.

Who knew that having my husband tickle me with a Q-Tip could be so exciting?

See the original article:

Oh, What a Feeling!

in

Up Stroke

Weekly Columnists

Definition: Columnist |ˈkäləmnist| (noun). A blogger or a journalist contributing regularly to a blog or newspaper

Musing: Clue to Brain Regeneration Discovered in Lab Mice

Dean Reinke
Deans' Stroke Musing

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Fascinating stuff. If we had anything close to a fucking decent stroke association this would be added to one of the strategies requiring followup and foundation grants to get researchers to study this in humans. This is so god-damned brain dead simple. But I don't think we have anyone in the stroke medical leadership that has two functioning neutrons. You're fucking screwed if you have a stroke anytime in the next 50 years. More wonderful stuff from the Dana Foundation - Clue to Brain Regeneration Discovered in Lab Mic

A salamander can lose a limb or an eye and grow it back, nerves and all. A gecko can detach its tail on purpose—a great way to spoof a pursuing predator—and a new one will sprout in weeks. A zebrafish can regenerate missing parts of its heart and brain. Unfortunately we mammals just aren’t very good at regrowing lost bits. Medicine would be transformed if we could find a way to surmount this limitation, particularly in the central nervous system (CNS), where regeneration is heavily restricted.

Among the more promising leads turned up recently is a finding from Harvard researchers, published online in May, that hints at a way to boost the regeneration capacity of CNS axons—nerve fibers that are often damaged in brain injuries and neurodegenerative diseases. Therapies that exploit the new finding are years away at best, but might end up being applicable to a variety of common, debilitating conditions, from strokes to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“We’re pretty confident in this being quite a big deal,” says Harvard’s Michael Costigan, who was co-senior author of the study, along with Clifford J. Woolf.

The Outlier

Sunday Stroke Survival: An Another Six Million Dollar Word and Stroke Recovery

Jo Murphey
The Murphey Saga

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Okay, this week I'm starting this week with a song.


Standard YouTube License @ 4TheDarkGames

No, I don't have this phobia, but it seems to fit today's topic for discussion.

Science is grand for coming up with humongous words to describe something simple. Today's term is neuroregeneration. It's a six million dollar word for regrowth of nerves.

A few years ago, I talked about this here on my blog having experienced it first hand after a back surgery deadened all feeling in both legs from the calf down. It took two years for the nerves to start regrowing enough to regain the sensation back in my feet. It came back in quarter size increments until there was only quarter sized increments of no feeling. I'm talking about full thickness loss of sensation. Example-I stepped on a nail and it inserted clear through my shoe and out the top of my shoe, and I didn't feel it. Now I feel everything when it comes to my calf down after twenty years.

Caregiver: Time for a Change

Diane
The Pink House On The Corner

Friday, January 22, 2016

After the van was weirdly, sinisterly damaged by the errant brick -- I have come to think that a) The Universe is trying to tell me something, or b) Bob is trying to tell me something, or c) I need to get rid of that van before I totally trash it, or d) all of the above --- and so, this past week, I called the wheelchair van place where we bought the Bobmobile and got a verbal offer of $30,000 cash to buy the van back.

And I thought, well, 30 grand will more than cover the cost of a small compact car for me.

I had originally thought of buying a Mini Cooper -- they are so cute, but Bubba told me he would "divorce" me if I bought one, as, according to Bubba, they are "pieces of crap" and he, as my mechanic, advised me to (his words) "get a little Jap car" instead.

So I went searching last weekend for a Japanese car.

I started looking at Nissans because long ago, in what seems another life, I had a 1987 Sentra Hatchback named Little Blue Bomber and I absolutely loved that car and it served me well for 13 years.

Jester: A Nun at Hooters

Jackie Poff
Stroke Survivors Tattler

A nun, badly needing to use the restroom, walked into a local Hooters.

The place was hopping with music and loud conversation -- and every once in a while 'the lights would turn off.'

Each time the lights would go out, the place would erupt into cheers. However, when the revelers saw the nun, the room went dead silent. She walked up to the bartender, and asked, 'May I please use the restroom?'

The bartender replied, 'OK, but I should warn you that there is a statue of a naked man in there wearing only a fig leaf.'

'Well, in that case, I'll just look the other way,' said the nun.

So the bartender showed the nun to the back of the restaurant. After a few minutes, she came back out, and the whole place stopped just long enough to give the nun a loud round of applause.

She went to the bartender and said, 'Sir, I don't understand. Why did they applaud for me just because I went to the restroom?'

'Well, now they know you're one of us,' said the bartender, 'Would you like a drink.'

'No thank you, but, I still don't understand,' said the puzzled nun.

'You see,' laughed the bartender, 'every time someone lifts the fig leaf on that statue, the lights go out. Now -- how about that drink?'

TED Talks - James Veitch: This is What Happens when you Reply to Spam Email

TED.com

Published on Jan 9, 2016

Suspicious emails: unclaimed insurance bonds, diamond-encrusted safe deposit boxes, close friends marooned in a foreign country. They pop up in our inboxes, and standard procedure is to delete on sight. But what happens when you reply? Follow along as writer and comedian James Veitch narrates a hilarious, weeks-long exchange with a spammer who offered to cut him in on a hot deal.


Standard YouTube License @ Maikel Akkermans

Rick Mercer Report: St. Lawrence Market & Cut in Half

www.rickmercer.com

Rick at the St. Lawrence Market

Published on Jan 20, 2016

Rick spends the day working with vendors at the world famous St. Lawrence Market – one of Canada’s oldest public markets in Toronto, ON.


Standard YouTube License @ Rick Mercer Report

Canada Cut in Half

Published on Jan 20, 2016

The Nipigon River Bridge collapse divides a nation, and tears a family apart.


Standard YouTube License @ Rick Mercer Report

Laid-Back Admin: Comparison of Web Browsers

Dr. Beagle C. Cranium
Stroke Survivors Tattler

The Best Web Browser? (November 2015)

Published on Nov 11, 2015

What's the best web browser for Windows and Mac?

In this video I compared Google Chrome vs Firefox vs Microsoft Edge vs Safari vs Opera on both Windows 10 and Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan on a 2015 MacBook Pro 13" using OS X and Windows (with Boot Camp).

Tests used:

• http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/
• https://developers.google.com/octane/
• http://html5test.com/
• http://www.browserscope.org/security/test
• http://beta.unity3d.com/jonas/WebGLBenchmark/
• Browser start and Google homepage load
• Memory usage with 8 tabs open

Standard YouTube License @ Austin Evans

Comparison of Web Browsers 

      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

XKCD: Possible Undiscovered Planets

A Webcomic Of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, And Language

|<        < Prev        Random       Next >        >| Possible Undiscovered Planets                              |<        < Prev        Random       Next >        >| Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors). http://xkcd.com -- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

Eclectic Stuff on Wednesday

Definition: Eclectic (noun). A person who derives ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources

If You Have Aides, 3 Things You Have to Remember About Acting Like Your Own Boss, aka YOU'RE in Charge!

Joyce Hoffman
The Tales of a Stroke Patient

Oct 25, 2015

It's so hard to deal with people. I had aides in New Jersey and had to find even more aides for my stroke care when I came to Pittsburgh. I called them personal assistants to give the job a more elevated status. It didn't help.

One was allegedly addicted to cocaine. One brought her boyfriend every time.  One told me I was discriminating against her when she couldn't lift my wheelchair anymore. One took her 2 whining children along.

One smoked wherever she went, even when there were "no smoking" signs posted. It was like a revolving door. I hired and then I fired. But what they all had in common was they needed money--my money. It took me a year to finally figure it out.

There are tons of aides, I later found out, through various websites. But the trick is finding great ones. You have work ahead of you as well. These 3 tips will help you find and keep the aides you want!

1. Establish your role from the start 

Unless it's your wife or husband, they're your employees, not the other way around. They work for you. And as your employees, give them a fair chance of doing things their own way. Then, if you don't like the way things are done, speak up. That was the hardest part for me, realizing that they work for me. But once I did, that was the end of feeling like they were in charge. Plus, they're not mind readers. You have to tell them what you like and what you don't!

Mental Practice in Stroke

Peter G. Levine
Stronger After Stroke

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Stroke survivors, quick question...

In your dreams, have you had a stroke?

Your answer is probably no.

What if you were able to access that memory for your recovery?

You can.



Not everything that will help stroke survivors recovery is a therapy - per se. Some things you can do benefit your brain so much that they help recovery as well. An example is Mental Practice.

Mental Practice - We've published on this one a lot. The idea is pretty simple - do what athletes and musicians do... Practice mentally. You get the idea, you sit back and imagine a movement, and then when you go to actually do the movement it's better.

50 Shades of Safety

Sas Freeman

January 26, 2016

I found myself in a situation of having to dismantle our grandfather clock, and as you may know already my difficulties following stroke you can appreciate my apprehension. Nick began by carefully removing the glass outer case, revealing the brass face and workings. At this point I bent next to the clock to retrieve something when I stumbled falling towards the clock, and before I knew it, the heavy brass face and workings had fallen from height hitting the side of my head, my glasses saving a little but blood still streaming down my neck. My head throbbing, I instantly fell but fortunately into a chair by side. I appeared stunned as couldn’t move at all in anyway for what felt like several minutes but in reality I am not sure how long it lasted.

Clock

I had a piercing pain inside my head and it felt as though somehow it was bleeding, even though that sounds strange. This feeling did not really go away so despite trying to carry on and continue with things I appeared to be getting worse, and the head pain became yet more intense, painkillers not able to relieve it in any way. I decided to make an appointment with my doctor who feared it might be a bleed and sent me directly to hospital for a scan. She phoned ahead so that they were expecting me.

The triage nurse was not so helpful because as soon as I told her truthfully, that the injury had not occurred that day her attitude changed towards me, and she told me I would have to wait my turn at the back with everyone else. I explained my doctor had already spoken to someone and I was expected for a scan, however she was clearly not in a listening frame of mind.

When I was seen the doctor was totally different, I was not allowed anywhere on my own or to even walk in case it was a bleed. Despite the scan showing a lot of damage to the brain as a result of my strokes, fortunately there were no signs of a bleed.. They say I have tissue damage and bad concussion so must take painkillers regularly, keep fluids up and rest as it could take a while to recover. Concussion takes longer for someone with previous brain injury to recover from than it does for anyone else. Something else for us to bear in mind.

See the original article:

50 Shades of Safety

in

Sas Freeman