Category Archives: Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Students deliver care packages to refugee children at the end of Ramadan – The South End

Celine Bazzi places a handwritten card inside a care package for Syrian refugee children and their families for Eid al-Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast at the end of Ramadan.

When COVID-19 hit Southeast Michigan, Dr. Arash Javanbakht and his crew of student researchers were forced to halt their studys data collection. It was a setback, certainly.

For nearly four years, Javanbakht and his team have been exploring the mental health impact and biological correlation of war trauma on Syrian refugees, many of them children, now living in the United States. But all Javanbakht could think about was the outbreaks impact on the families who have become so much more than research participants.

Given it was Ramadan, and especially during this stressful time of the pandemic, I thought of a way to bring a smile to the kids, said Javanbakht, associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences and director of the Stress, Trauma and Anxiety Research Clinic. We brainstormed and decided to make gift packages for the children and their families, and deliver them to their doors for Eid al-Fitr [the festival of breaking the fast at the end of Ramadan].

With the parents permission, Javanbakht and the team of undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students most of whom have Arabic backgrounds, and some who are also refugees created care packages of snacks and school supplies for the children and delivered it to their doors on May 22. In addition, Wayne State Marketing and Communications donated backpacks, pens and T-shirts.

While Javanbakht covered all the costs, he said the team did the hard work of choosing, purchasing, packaging and delivering the age-appropriate gifts.

Tailoring the box with respect to each specific family and their children provided such a valuable experience, said Celine Bazzi, 22, who graduated in spring 2020 with a bachelors in biological sciences and minors in philosophy and health care ethics. Being able to tend to each child individually, as well as brainstorm ideas of what they might enjoy, made the process that much more special.

While Bazzis last semester at Wayne State didnt end according to plan, she said she will take with her the memory of being sprawled out on her living room floor, surrounded by immense amounts of goodies, anticipating iftar [the time in which fast is broken], while handwriting the beautifully crafted cards.

For postdoctoral researcher Bassem Saad, 30, seeing the families reactions hit him deeply. As a person coming from the Middle East, an immigrant, my cause has always been supporting people who had suffered a lot through civil war, he said. I was over the moon that they feel recognized, accepted and understood in the academic scene.

Lana Grasser, a 24-year-old Ph.D. candidate going into her fourth year of Wayne States translational neuroscience program, hoped the care packages would bring a little joy during a time of hardship.

We have worked with these families not only in the labs, but also in the home. It felt like seeing my own family, but it was hard to not give them all hugs, she said. Through our Eid gift-giving, we were able to make a small part of the world in our own personal circles a little bit better and brighter. We are so grateful for all the time they have given us and stories they have shared. This was the least we could do.

That feeling was shared among the entire team.

As a research assistant, I have visited the homes of the families involved in our study and they always welcome us with so much hospitality, said Rajaa Shoukfeh, 22, who graduated in December 2019 with a bachelors in nutrition and food science. When Dr. Javanbakht first brought up the idea at one of our weekly team meetings, it was so heartwarming. Its such a kind gesture to repay their kindness and show them how much we appreciate their participation.

Read the rest here:
Students deliver care packages to refugee children at the end of Ramadan - The South End

Neuroscience

Studies advance the understanding of sensory disconnection during sleep and anesthesia – News-Medical.Net

During sleep and under anesthesia, we rarely respond to such external stimuli as sounds even though our brains remain highly active.

Now, a series of new studies by researchers at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience finds, among other important discoveries, that noradrenaline, a neurotransmitter secreted in response to stress, lies at the heart of our ability to "shut off" our sensory responses and sleep soundly.

"In these studies, we used different, novel approaches to study the filtering of sensory information during sleep and the brain mechanisms that determine when we awaken in response to external events," explains Prof. Yuval Nir, who led the research for the three studies.

The first study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience on April 1 and led by TAU doctoral student Yaniv Sela, calls into question the commonly accepted idea that the thalamus -- an important relay station for sensory signals in the brain -- is responsible for blocking the transmission of signals to the cerebral cortex.

"The shutdown of the thalamic gate is not compatible with our findings," says Sela whose study compares how neurons in different brain regions respond to simple and complex sounds while asleep or awake.

Using rat models, he found that the responses of neurons in the auditory cortex were similar when the rodents were awake or asleep. But when he examined the perirhinal cortex, related to complex conscious perception and memory associations, he found that neurons showed much weaker responses during sleep.

"Basic analysis of sound remains during sleep, but the sleeping brain has trouble creating a conscious perception of the stimulus," Sela adds. "

Also, while we found that initial and fast responses are preserved in sleep, those that occur later and require communication between different regions in the cortex are greatly disrupted."

The second study, published on April 8 in Science Advances, finds that the locus coeruleus, a tiny region of the brainstem and the main source of noradrenaline secretions in the brain, plays a central role in our ability to disconnect from the environment during sleep.

Led by TAU doctoral student Hanna Hayat at Prof. Nir's lab, the research was conducted in collaboration with Prof. Tony Pickering of Bristol University, Prof. Ofer Yizhar of the Weizmann Institute and Prof. Eric Kremer pf the University of Montpellier.

The ability to disconnect from the environment, in a reversible way, is a central feature of sleep, Our findings clearly show that the locus coeruleus noradrenaline system plays a crucial role in this disconnection by keeping a very low level of activity during sleep."

Hanna Hayat, Doctoral Student, Tel Aviv University

For the purpose of the research, the scientists used rat models to determine the level of locus coeruleus activity during sleep and which sounds, if any, would be responsible for waking up the rodents.

They found that the rats' varying levels of locus coeruleus activity accurately predict if the animals would awaken in response to sounds.

The team then silenced the locus coeruleus activity through optogenetics, which harnesses light to control neuronal activity, and found that the rats did not readily awaken in response to sound.

"When we increased the noradrenaline activity of the locus-coeruleus while a sound played in the background, the rats woke up more frequently in response, but when we decreased the activity of the locus coeruleus and played the same sound in the background, the rats only rarely woke up," says Hayat.

"So we can say we identified a powerful 'dial' that controls the depth of sleep despite external stimuli."

"Importantly, our findings suggest that hyperarousal in some individuals who sleep lightly, or during periods of stress, maybe a result of continued noradrenaline activity during sleep when there should only be minimal activity."

The third study, published on May 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), led jointly by TAU doctoral student Dr. Aaron Krom of Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center and TAU doctoral student Amit Marmelshtein, focuses on our response to anesthesia and finds that the most significant effect of loss-of-consciousness is the disruption of communication between different cortical regions.

The study was the fruit of a collaboration between Prof. Nir, Prof. Itzhak Fried and Dr. Ido Strauss of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and a team at Bonn University.

"Despite the routine use of anesthesia in medicine, we still do not understand how anesthesia leads to loss of consciousness; this is considered a major open question in biomedical research," explains Dr. Krom.

For the research, the scientists recorded the brain activity of epilepsy patients who had previously shown little to no response to drug interventions. The patients were hospitalized for a week and implanted with electrodes to pinpoint where in the brain their seizures originated.

They were then anesthetized for the removal of their electrodes and their neuron activity recorded while they listened to sounds through headphones.

They were asked to perform a task until they lost consciousness, which allowed the researchers to examine how their brain activity changed, down to individual neurons, in response to sounds at the very moment they lost consciousness.

"We found that loss-of-consciousness disrupted communication between cortical regions such that sounds triggered responses in the primary auditory cortex, but failed to reliably drive responses in other regions of the cortex," adds Marmelshtein.

"This is the first study to examine how anesthesia and loss of consciousness affect sensory responses at a resolution of individual neurons in humans."

"We hope that our results will guide future research, as well as attempts to improve anesthesia and develop instruments that can monitor the level of consciousness in anesthesia and other states of altered consciousness such as vegetative states and severe dementia."

"These studies advance our understanding of sensory disconnection during sleep and anesthesia," concludes Prof Nir. "Sleep disturbances are a major health issue and are frequent in aging, as well as in neurological and psychiatric disorders."

"It is important to test if our findings on varying noradrenaline levels can explain hyperarousal that characterizes conditions such as anxiety disorders and PTSD and if so to build on these findings to develop novel methods to improve sleep quality."

Source:

Journal reference:

Krom, A.J., et al. (2020) Anesthesia-induced loss of consciousness disrupts auditory responses beyond primary cortex. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1917251117.

View original post here:
Studies advance the understanding of sensory disconnection during sleep and anesthesia - News-Medical.Net

Neuroscience

Researchers deliver care packages to refugee children at the end of Ramadan – The South End

Celine Bazzi places a handwritten card inside a care package for Syrian refugee children and their families for Eid al-Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast at the end of Ramadan.

When COVID-19 hit Southeast Michigan, Dr. Arash Javanbakht and his crew of student researchers were forced to halt their studys data collection. It was a setback, certainly.

For nearly four years, Javanbakht and his team have been exploring the mental health impact and biological correlation of war trauma on Syrian refugees, many of them children, now living in the United States. But all Javanbakht could think about was the outbreaks impact on the families who have become so much more than research participants.

Given it was Ramadan, and especially during this stressful time of the pandemic, I thought of a way to bring a smile to the kids, said Javanbakht, associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences and director of the Stress, Trauma and Anxiety Research Clinic. We brainstormed and decided to make gift packages for the children and their families, and deliver them to their doors for Eid al-Fitr [the festival of breaking the fast at the end of Ramadan].

With the parents permission, Javanbakht and the team of undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students most of whom have Arabic backgrounds, and some who are also refugees created care packages of snacks and school supplies for the children and delivered it to their doors on May 22. In addition, Wayne State Marketing and Communications donated backpacks, pens and T-shirts.

While Javanbakht covered all the costs, he said the team did the hard work of choosing, purchasing, packaging and delivering the age-appropriate gifts.

Tailoring the box with respect to each specific family and their children provided such a valuable experience, said Celine Bazzi, 22, who graduated in spring 2020 with a bachelors in biological sciences and minors in philosophy and health care ethics. Being able to tend to each child individually, as well as brainstorm ideas of what they might enjoy, made the process that much more special.

While Bazzis last semester at Wayne State didnt end according to plan, she said she will take with her the memory of being sprawled out on her living room floor, surrounded by immense amounts of goodies, anticipating iftar [the time in which fast is broken], while handwriting the beautifully crafted cards.

For postdoctoral researcher Bassem Saad, 30, seeing the families reactions hit him deeply. As a person coming from the Middle East, an immigrant, my cause has always been supporting people who had suffered a lot through civil war, he said. I was over the moon that they feel recognized, accepted and understood in the academic scene.

Lana Grasser, a 24-year-old Ph.D. candidate going into her fourth year of Wayne States translational neuroscience program, hoped the care packages would bring a little joy during a time of hardship.

We have worked with these families not only in the labs, but also in the home. It felt like seeing my own family, but it was hard to not give them all hugs, she said. Through our Eid gift-giving, we were able to make a small part of the world in our own personal circles a little bit better and brighter. We are so grateful for all the time they have given us and stories they have shared. This was the least we could do.

That feeling was shared among the entire team.

As a research assistant, I have visited the homes of the families involved in our study and they always welcome us with so much hospitality, said Rajaa Shoukfeh, 22, who graduated in December 2019 with a bachelors in nutrition and food science. When Dr. Javanbakht first brought up the idea at one of our weekly team meetings, it was so heartwarming. Its such a kind gesture to repay their kindness and show them how much we appreciate their participation.

Continue reading here:
Researchers deliver care packages to refugee children at the end of Ramadan - The South End

Neuroscience

Book Review: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Human Brain – Undark Magazine

We know little about the life of Alcmaeon of Croton: We can be pretty sure he hailed from the coastal city of Croton (present day Crotone), in the far south of Italy, and had a father named Peirithous; he may have been a student of Pythagoras. We dont know when he was born or when he died; only that he was active in the 5th century B.C. But we know he was fascinated by the human body, and was willing to challenge some of the established dogmas of his day. In particular, he may have been the first to assert that the brain not the heart is the seat of the mind. At the very least, he seems to have recognized the importance of this astonishing organ.

BOOK REVIEW The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience, by Matthew Cobb (Basic Books, 496 pages).

In The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience, Matthew Cobb, a biologist at the University of Manchester, shows just how long and arduous the road to understanding the brain has been and, as he makes clear, the journey has only just begun. The brain, we are often told, is the most complex entity in the known universe. And though we surmise that the brain is what allows us to think and feel and perceive and know, it is far from clear how it accomplishes this.

A good metaphor might help, if only we could latch onto the right one: Is the brain like a complicated electrical circuit, or a telephone switchboard, or a digital computer, or a neural network? Or none of the above? As Cobb lays out the history, from the ancient Greeks to the present day, he offers a candid analysis of where these analogies have been helpful, and where theyve fallen short.

In his book Elements of Eletro-Biology, published in 1849, an English polymath and inventor named Alfred Smee argued that the brain was made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny batteries, each of them somehow connected to a different part of the body. Emotions such as desire, and even consciousness itself, were supposedly the result of these little batteries working in various combinations. He even drew up plans for what he believed would be a thinking machine, composed of metal plates and hinges and other paraphernalia.

As Cobb points out, as fuzzy as some of Smees ideas were, he was also occasionally prescient, as with his proposal for sending what we would now call video signals over long distances. There is no reason, Smee wrote, why a view of St. Pauls in London should not be carried to Edinburgh through tubes like the nerves which carry the impression to the brain.

Is the mind merely the result of marvelously complex machinery? A famous criticism of the brain-as-machine metaphor comes from the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Suppose, Leibniz argued in 1714, you had a thinking machine that duplicated the function of the human brain, and scaled it up so that one could enter it as one does a mill. You get to then walk about the interior of this device, observing parts which push upon each other and yet one would find nothing which would explain a perception.

Echoes of Leibnizs argument can still be heard today, especially by those who find it hard to imagine that the mind has a material explanation. (I was a little disappointed that Cobb doesnt explore the numerous counterarguments that have been leveled against Leibniz over the years. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, for example, asks: Might it be that somehow the organization of all the parts which work one upon another yields consciousness as an emergent product? And if so, why couldnt we hope to understand it, once we had developed the right concepts?)

Though we surmise that the brain is what allows us to think and feel and perceive and know, it is far from clear how it accomplishes this.

It wasnt until the middle of the 19th century that scientists came to understand that different brain regions accomplished different tasks. Often this knowledge came through observing victims of brain damage. A famous example involved an American railway worker named Phineas Gage. In 1848, Gage suffered a traumatic head injury when an explosion sent a 1.1-meter-long iron rod through his skull. Incredibly, Gage survived, living another 20 years but his personality was radically changed. A model employee before the accident, Gage became fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity, according to a doctor who knew him. It was the front of Gages brain that received the most damage; as Cobb notes, the case suggested that various aspects of mental life linked to attention and behavior were somehow localized in the frontal parts of the brain.

Enter Darwin, whose theory of natural selection forced us to think of the brain as the product of countless eons of evolution. If humans and apes share a common ancestor, then our brains, and perhaps our minds, couldnt be all that different. Inspired by Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley Darwins bulldog compared human and ape brains, concluding that there is no dispute as to the resemblance in fundamental characters, between the apes brain and mans, noting the wonderfully close similarity between our brains and those of chimpanzees and orangutans.

Neurons the brains cells were discovered in the 1830s, though the method by which they send signals to one another was only discerned in the 20th century, as the science behind synaptic transmission took shape, and the role of neurotransmitters became clearer. As telephones and telegraphs flourished in the 1800s, so did analogies between the brain and a telephone network, but, writes Cobb, discoveries in biology soon showed how limited this analogy was. Even if we talk of switches in the brain, these switches did not work in the same way as those in a piece of electrical equipment. Biological discovery was outstripping the dominant technological metaphor and revealing that the brain is not a telephone exchange.

The 20th century brought the digital computer, and the brain-as-computer metaphor persists to this day. Of the many fascinating historical details in the book, one of the most remarkable is the mid-20th-century collaboration between neurologist Warren McCullogh and a self-taught teenage prodigy named Walter Pitts. Working together, they developed the first computational theory of the mind: a fascinating mix of mathematical logic, computer science, and biology. Yet as promising as their work was, the sheer complexity of the human brain threatened to derail the whole effort. An early critique came from computer science pioneer John von Neumann. As Cobb puts it, von Neumann realized that real nervous systems were far more complicated than those described by McCullogh and Pitts and that neurons unfortunately did not always function in the all-or-nothing fashion of the electronic switches in a digital computer.

By the final decades of the 20th century, the discoveries were coming fast and furious. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offered tantalizing hints of what areas of the brain are most active, when we do or think about certain things. And the new science of neural networks, which is continuing to revolutionize computer science as we speak, offered new metaphors for the brains function.

And yet, the end goal a true understanding of the brains connections, and how they produce their mental counterparts still seems like a distant mirage. While acknowledging astonishing progress, Cobb writes that, in his view, it will probably take 50 years before we understand the maggot brain. Later, after a discussion of mental illness and the search for effective treatments, Cobb writes that unravelling the genetic architecture of the human brain and how it interacts with the environment will be the work of centuries.

And there remains what Cobb refers to as this question of questions the puzzle of consciousness.

The Idea of the Brain offers a compelling account of the twists and turns that our quest to understand this remarkable organ has taken over the centuries. How wonderful it would be to know how the story ends, but that will have to wait. The brain is so complex that it has not yet come to know itself.

Original post:
Book Review: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Human Brain - Undark Magazine

Neuroscience

Last Minute Deal: FitMind Neuroscience-Based Meditation App, Save 75% – Geeky Gadgets

We have an amazing deal on the FitMind Neuroscience-Based Meditation App in the Geeky Gadgets Deals store today, you can save 75% off the normal price.

The FitMind Neuroscience-Based Meditation App is available in the Geeky Gadgets Deals store for just $49.

The problem with meditation is that there are so many different methods; its hard to know what to practice. Meditation can seem complex and difficult to master, or otherwise over-simplified. FitMind combines ancient techniques with western science to create an effective mental fitness program. The FitMind approach is taught at Fortune 500 companies, addiction centers, schools, and government organizations. Youll learn to master meditation in 30 days by progressing through a series of guided trainings. The FitMind app will also explain the science and psychology behind the practice and provide daily challenges for integrating it into your everyday life.

Here are some of the features:

You can find out more information on this great deal on the FitMind Neuroscience-Based Meditation App over at our deals store at the link below.

Get this deal>

Go here to see the original:
Last Minute Deal: FitMind Neuroscience-Based Meditation App, Save 75% - Geeky Gadgets

Neuroscience

Prothena to Present at the Jefferies Virtual Healthcare Conference on June 3 – GlobeNewswire

DUBLIN, Ireland, May 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Prothena Corporation plc (NASDAQ:PRTA), a clinical-stage neuroscience company with expertise in protein misfolding, today announced that members of its senior management team will present and participate in the Jefferies Virtual Healthcare Conference on Wednesday June 3 at 3:30 PM ET.

A webcast of the company presentation can be accessed through the investor relations section of the Company's website at http://www.prothena.com. Following the presentation, a replay of the webcast will be available on the Company's website for at least 90 days following the presentation date.

About Prothena

Prothena Corporation plc is a clinical-stage neuroscience company with expertise in protein misfolding, focused on the discovery and development of novel therapies with the potential to fundamentally change the course of devastating diseases. Fueled by its deep scientific expertise built over decades of research, Prothena is advancing a pipeline of therapeutic candidates for a number of indications and novel targets for which its ability to integrate scientific insights around neurological dysfunction and the biology of misfolded proteins can be leveraged. Prothenas partnered programs include prasinezumab (PRX002/RG7935), in collaboration with Roche for the potential treatment of Parkinsons disease and other related synucleinopathies, and programs that target tau, TDP-43 and an undisclosed target in collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb for the potential treatment of Alzheimers disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) or other neurodegenerative diseases. Prothenas proprietary programs include PRX004 for the potential treatment of ATTR amyloidosis, and programs that target A (Amyloid beta) for the potential treatment of Alzheimers disease. For more information, please visit the Companys website at http://www.prothena.com and follow the Company on Twitter @ProthenaCorp.

Media and Investor Contact:

Ellen Rose, Head of Communications650-922-2405, ellen.rose@prothena.com

Continued here:
Prothena to Present at the Jefferies Virtual Healthcare Conference on June 3 - GlobeNewswire

Neuroscience

Denali unveils new way of crossing blood brain barrier as the big neuroscience bets enter its clinical years – Endpoints News

Five years ago, as much of pharma began leaving neuroscience, three big-name scientists from Genentech and some A-list investors, including ARCH and Flagship, made a $217 million bet that new genetic insights and a reliance on biomarkers could bring them success. They called it Denali Therapeutics.

Still, Denali faced the problem that neuroscience developers have faced for decades: How do you get a large molecule across the blood-brain barrier, a natural defense evolved precisely to keep them out? Enzyme replacement therapy, for instance, would be a great candidate to treat several neurological disorders, but enzymes cant cross the barrier.

Now, Denali thinks theyve solved the problem, or at least part of it. In a pair of papers published inScience Translational Medicine,the South San Francisco biotech detailed the invention of a new transport vehicle to sneak large molecules past the brains gates. So far, its been used in mice and monkeys, but they wont wait long to bring it to patients: A clinical trial using it to replace an enzyme lost in people with Hunters syndrome is set to begin this year, with proof-of-concept data expected to come before 2021.

The blood-brain barrier consists in part of tightly packed endothelial cells. Since certain molecules, such as insulin, cross the barrier by first binding to receptors on these cells and then being allowed through, scientists have long tried to build antibodies that can similarly bind to these receptors and shuttle across a therapeutic cargo. But the results, over several decades, have been less than transformative.

CEO and founder Ryan Watts has been part of that search since his Genentech days. The research method he and Denalis scientists came up with began with a process called directed evolution in which a protein is induced to mutate repeatedly, until it gives rise to a protein with the qualities you want to build a protein, called an FC fragment, that binds to whats called a transferrin receptor, a node that normally imports iron into the brain. In theory, there are numerous drugs one could then hook onto that Fc fragment, but Denali first tested it with an antibody-targeting enzyme called beta-secretase. The enzyme is linked to the build-up of amyloid plaques in people with Alzheimers, and the researchers showed their vehicle reduced the amount of amyloid in mice and monkeys.

In a second study, the researchers attached an enzyme called iduronate-2-sulfatase, the critical protein that people with Hunters syndrome are missing. Without it, sugars called glycosaminoglycans build up in cells, causing abnormalities in several different organs. Shire gained approval for an enzyme replacement therapy in 2006, but it only works outside the brain (the companys erstwhile efforts to improve cognitive function yielded little promise). Using the transport vehicle, though, Denali was able to get significantly increased brain penetration of the enzyme and reduce the pathology in mice and monkeys.

Denali played up the potential versatility of their approach over other blood-brain-barrier-crossing proposals, such as bispecific antibodies, saying you can attach a greater range of therapies to their vehicle. The company has over a dozen programs including a Parkinsons one now in the clinic but the first test of the vehicle will be later this year, in 16 kids with a rare disease whose worst symptoms remain untreated.

Go here to read the rest:
Denali unveils new way of crossing blood brain barrier as the big neuroscience bets enter its clinical years - Endpoints News

Neuroscience

First spine surgeries performed in the region – Waushara Argus

The surgical team of providers from ThedaCare and Neuroscience Group have successfully performed the first robotic-assisted spine surgeries in Northeast and Central Wisconsin using the Mazor X Platform this week.

It is estimated that nearly 80 percent of the population will suffer from lower back pain at some point in their lives, with one in 20 of them needing surgery. As spinal surgery has evolved, more focus has been placed on new techniques often providing benefits of less blood loss, less radiation exposure, less tissue damage, and less pain and resulting opioid use.

To enhance access to specialized care close to home, ThedaCare recently installed the new Mazor X StealthTM Edition Robotic Guidance Platform. ThedaCare, in partnership with Neuroscience Group, is one of the first in the area to offer this spine surgical technology to patients and is one of the first to adopt this technology in the United States.

The Mazor X is a guide for the surgeons hands that provides a huge advance in accurate pedicle screw placement, said Randall Johnson, MD PhD, neurosurgeon at Neuroscience Group and Spine Surgery Medical Director at ThedaCare. This technology will set the standard for the future of minimally invasive and scoliosis surgery.

The Mazor X Platform enhances surgeons limited view of patients anatomy with a 3D surgical plans and analytics. This provides comprehensive information and visualization before the surgery starts, ultimately supporting the commitment to operate with precision. According to Dr. Johnson, this means the angle, width and length of every screw, is planned from the preoperative CT scan and two x-rays during surgery. Its safer for the patient and the surgical team in terms of radiation exposure as it limits the number of necessary x-rays.

A patients health and safety are top priorities for ThedaCare, said Michael Hooker, DO, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Acute Care at ThedaCare. By bringing new technology to the area, ThedaCare is helping promote faster recovery times, reducing postoperative pain and improving results for our patients. The staff is committed to getting patients back to doing what they love most, as quickly as possible.

Due to the COVID-19 response, much like health care systems across the country, ThedaCare made necessary adjustments to operations and services. In early May, ThedaCare began reinstating services that had previously been deferred, including surgeries.

The mission is to improve the health of the communities ThedaCare serves, and that means connecting community members to the care they need, said Lynn Detterman, Senior Vice President of ThedaCare South Region. Because of the teams tireless work through the intentional phased reopening plan, multiple safeguards are in place and are in a position to begin offering essential and routine services for illness and ongoing medical care. ThedaCare is proud to welcome technology like this to enhance care options for patients.

View post:
First spine surgeries performed in the region - Waushara Argus

Neuroscience

The Neuroscience of Thriving Through Crisis: How to Make Work Sustainable and Leverage the Moment – ATD

Dr. David Rock coined the term Neuroleadership and is the Director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, a global initiative bringing neuroscientists and leadership experts together to build a new science for leadership development. With operations in 24 countries, the Institute also helps large organizations operationalize brain research in order to develop better leaders and managers.

David co-edits the NeuroLeadership Journal and heads up an annual global summit. He has written many of the central academic and discussion papers that have defined the Neuroleadership field. He is the author of the business best-seller Your Brain at Work (Harper Business, 2009), as well as Quiet Leadership (Harper Collins, 2006) and the textbook Coaching with the Brain in Mind (Wiley & Sons, 2009). He blogs for the Harvard Business Review, Fortune Magazine, Psychology Today, and the Huffington Post, and is quoted widely in the media about leadership, organizational effectiveness, and the brain.

Academically, David is on the faculty and advisory board of CIMBA, an international business school based in Europe. He has been a guest lecturer at many universities including Oxford Universitys Said Business School. He is on the board of the BlueSchool, an initiative in New York City building a new approach to education. He received his professional doctorate in the Neuroscience of Leadership from Middlesex University in 2010.

Follow this link:
The Neuroscience of Thriving Through Crisis: How to Make Work Sustainable and Leverage the Moment - ATD