For people with schizophrenia, UK national treatment guidelines recommend group art therapy to improve mental health and social functioning, but a new study published in theBritish Medical Journal has found art therapy to be ineffectual. Schizophrenia affects as many as one in 100 people at some point in their lives. While antipsychotic medication can reduce […]
Pathological gambling and hypersexuality are two of the better documented side-effects of Parkinson’s disease medications, but researchers say that dopamine therapy can also trigger the relentless pursuit of artistic endeavors. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. It also helps to regulate movement and emotional responses and enables people […]
Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced researcher who claimed a link between MMR vaccine and autism, planned a secret multi-national business offering alternative vaccines and therapeutic services based on his now-discredited research. The plans are revealed by investigative journalist Brian Deer in the current issue of the British Medical Journal. Drawing on documents obtained under the Freedom […]
European researchers say that similarities in brain activity during lucid dreaming and psychosis indicate that previously discredited dream therapy could play a useful role in treating psychiatric conditions. Interestingly, the researchers back up their findings by theorizing about a potential evolutionary relationship between dreams and psychosis. Lucid dreaming is a hybrid state between sleeping and […]
Columbia University researchers, writing in the latest issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, say that experiments with monkeys have confirmed earlier findings that electroconvulsive shock treatment can stimulate new nerve cell growth in the brain. The new nerve cells were observed in the dentate gyrus region of the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved […]
A new gene therapy based on a disabled AIDS virus carrying genetic material that inhibits HIV replication has produced positive results in a Phase I clinical trial, say researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Reporting in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Penn researcher Carl June said that viral loads in […]
According to a paper published this week inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say they have superseded previous methods of gene delivery into living organisms, without the usual side-effects. Instead of using potentially toxic and unstable viral vectors, University of Buffalo (UB) scientists developed and customized nanoparticles that they successfully used to deliver […]
