Brain Injury review

This article is by Khachanova et al from Russia

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a progressive disease that leads to early disability of young adults at a reproductive age. Motor disturbances caused by progressive pyramidal deficit and cerebellar dysfunction, accompanied by ataxia with frequent falls, and early decrease of physical activity are risk factors of osteoporosis in MS patients. A relapsing-remitting course of the disease with frequent attacks demands multiple courses of steroid therapy. Long-term steroid treatment causes bone loss and development of secondary osteoporosis. We have shown that reduced bone mineral density (BMD) in lumbar spine and femoral neck is associated with high level of EDSS score caused by the combination of moderate pyramidal and cerebellar dysfunction. An additional risk factor of osteoporosis in MS patients is low body weight. The glucocorticoid therapy does not exert a negative impact on BMD in lumbar spine and femoral neck in patients with MS.

From Pubmed Id=17172237

Studies of memory impairment in humans and experimental animals have been fundamental to learning about the organization of memory and its cellular and molecular substrates. When memory impairment occurs, especially after perturbations of the nervous system, the question inevitably arises whether the impairment reflects impaired information storage or impaired accessibility. This topic has been the subject of considerable commentary and experimental work over the years. In this reappraisal, I first consider four broad areas of behavioral study from the 1970s and 1980s that led to a dominant and compelling view of memory impairment as a deficit of information storage. Second, I identify some ambiguities that arise about how the terms “storage” and “retrieval” are applied, especially when the evidence is somewhat indirect and based on a behavioral-psychological level of analysis. I then review neurobiological findings that have been largely overlooked in these discussions. The relevant studies are ones where it has been possible to monitor neurons and synapses in direct relation to behavioral memory, for example, in animals with simple nervous systems and in single cell recordings from behaving monkeys. This work provides a straightforward and illuminating perspective on the question and confirms the view that first emerged from less direct evidence.

This article is by Larry R. Squire from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego,  USA

The pubmed ID for the full article is PMCID: 1635408

This new paper is by m marrero et al from nova southeastern university.

Psychologists and other therapists are seeing an increasingly large number of bilingual individuals. Such clients are a special challenge when there has been some type of brain injury or disease because of the seemingly unpredictable effect such disorders may have on language skills, impacting either or both of the client’s languages and interfering with internal speech that plays a role in higher cognitive functions such as insight and awareness. While there are many clinical assumptions about which language will show the least impairment or recover the best, such suppositions based on clinical lore are often contradictory. A review of the literature finds that the outcome of brain injury may be influenced by factors such as cerebral representation of a secondary language, method of language.

Pubmed Id 17201194