Brave teen stands up for all those who struggle to speak but have so much to say

Mar 6 2011 Maggie Barry, Sunday Mail

connor stewart Image 2

FRUSTRATION echoes in Connor Stewart's voice.
Because every word is a struggle for the 17-year-old, who is sharp and extremely bright.
A bone marrow transplant to save him from childhood leukaemia resulted in a brain injury which means he must fight to get his words out.
But Connor knows he is not alone and that even his limited skills make him luckier than some who cannot speak at all.
Which is why he has become an ambassador for the Talk for Scotland campaign, representing thousands who cannot communicate properly.
He said: "Being unable to communicate can make you feel very isolated but when I went to Civic Participation Network meetings, I found people with similar problems."
Some of them had suffered throat cancer, strokes or brain haemorrhages. Others had MS, Parkinson's or Aphasia. But they all had one thing in common - they found it difficult to express what they wanted to say.
Connor, from Bathgate, West Lothian, said: "Since working with these people, I have become more determine.... Read More...

Imaging Study Probes Consciousness in Brain-Injured Patients

New research uses imaging technology to assess higher-level cognitive functioning in severely brain-injured patients. The study provides a window into consciousness — but the view it presents is one that is blurred in fascinating ways, say researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College.
In a novel study of six patients ranging in their function from minimally conscious state to the locked-in syndrome (normal cognitive function with severe motor impairment), the researchers looked at how the brains of these patients respond to a set of commands and questions while being scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).Read more...

BoyCriedWolf - he didn’t

Two years ago, travelling through Vietnam on a family holiday, Antonio (Toni) Ianella suffered a stroke. He was 38 with three young children and spent three days in intensive care before being moved to a ward and flown home to Melbourne 11 days later.
His stroke was the result of an undiagnosed AVM (arteriovenous malformation) and occurred as a bleed on his brain stem.
He is lucky to be alive: “I was told only one in five people survive a bleed in the base of their brain,” Toni says.
Back in Melbourne Toni spent time at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Sunshine Hospital in intensive three-month rehabilitation.
The former construction site project manager found he had to reassess the life he had led. With some cognitive, hearing, speech and mobility changes post-stroke the construction site job was no longer viable.
“I had my chosen career pretty much taken away from me.  Really, the next step was to work on what I could do and what I was still passionate about.”
For Toni that was music. He had always written and played songs and had a string of projects that he dabbled in – all around music. No longer able to play an instrument, he turned his energy to writing songs and forming a band – BoyCriedWolf.
“I had to think about the things I love and that has always been music,” he says.
“Music is about making magic out of emotion.”
The band has been successful – winning a Battle of the Bands competition last year, the small winnings of which has allowed an album to be recorded – and is not the only project Toni works on in his modest home recording studio.
“It’s been two years now, a relapse last July and I have to accept this (his recovery) is going to stick around for a while. I have to work around it. I’ve done a web design course and am focusing on family and getting better in small steps.”
To hear Toni’s music click here.
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Harvard Researchers Illuminate Connections Among Brain Cells in Technicolor

Fly Brainbow HHMI via Technology Review

In 2007, Harvard scientists figured out how to combine fluorescent proteins to create an entire color palette, and then used it to make mouse neurons glow so they could be traced through the brain. The “Brainbow” technique has helped scientists follow neurons’ connections, which had been almost impossible to untangle.
Fruit fly researchers have now done the same thing, producing a dual Brainbow of methods for making Drosophila neurons glow. It is much simpler and faster than staining individual neurons, another method for mapping brain connections.
Many neurons are visible in the above cross-section of a fly brain, which was published in the journal Nature Methods last week.
The image below was made with the dBrainbow method, which involves six colors that help indicate which neurons arose from which progenitor cells. This is useful for studying how connections form between neurons, as Technology Review explains. The red and blue groups are both olfactory neurons, but they arose from different progenitor cells.

Olfactory Neurons:  Phuong Chung, Stefanie Hampel, and Julie H. Simpson/HHMI via Technology Review

The Flybow method, which involves four colors, allows cells to change color at any point during their development by applying heat.
Scientists have plenty of techniques to manipulate fruit fly genes, which means they will be able to exert even more precise control over the colors, only illuminating certain neurons or subsets of neurons. Tech Review says. The following dBrainbow image shows a group of about 2,000 neurons that are thought to underlie male courtship behavior.

Male Courtship Neurons:  Phuong Chung, Stefanie Hampel, and Julie H. Simpson/HHMI via Technology Review

 

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Take time for tea and give your brain a lift as well as reduce tiredness

More benefits: A cup of tea can improve brain power, a new study has claimed

Having a cuppa could help you solve the crossword faster, according to the latest study.

Natural ingredients found in a cup of tea can improve brain power and increase alertness, it is claimed.

Researchers looked at the effect of key chemicals found in tea on the mental performance of 44 young volunteers.

The effects of these ingredients, an amino acid called L-theanine – which is also found in green tea – and caffeine at levels typically found in a cup of tea, were compared with a dummy treatment.

The active ingredients significantly improved accuracy across a number of switching tasks for those who drank the tea after 20 and 70 minutes, compared with the placebo.

The tea drinkers’ alertness was also heightened, the study found.

Tea was also found to reduced tiredness among the volunteers, who were aged under 40, according to the Dutch researchers reporting on their findings in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience.

‘The results suggest the combination helps to focus attention during a demanding cognitive task,’ they said. Previous trials have shown that adding milk to a cup of tea does not affect the drinker’s absorption of flavonoids – or antioxidants – or disrupt the health benefits from these.


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Professors offering free seminars for Healthy Aging Series

Professors offering free seminars for Healthy Aging Series
01-25-11

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Misericordia University professors Jim Siberski, M.S., C.M.C., CRmT, assistant professor and coordinator of gerontology education, and Hunter Manasco, Ph.D., C.C.C.-S.L.P., assistant professor of speech-language pathology, are participating in the free Masonic Village at Dallas Spring 2011 Healthy Aging Series at the Irem Country Club beginning in February.

Dr. Manasco is presenting the seminar, “Normal Changes in Cognition with Aging,’’ on Wednesday, Feb. 16 at 2 p.m. Dr. Manasco earned his undergraduate degree in English literature with a minor in economics from Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama. He also received a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree in communications disorders at the University of Montevallo in Alabama. He completed his doctorate in speech-language pathology at the University of South Alabama.

His areas of specialization include neuroanatomy, aphasia, motor speech disorders, dysphagia, traumatic brain injury, dementia and autism. His primary research interests center on stroke and traumatic brain injury rehabilitation. Dr. Manasco’s current research project concentrates on poetry as language therapy and as a coping mechanism in aphasia. He has also presented numerous papers in his areas of specialty at state and national conferences.

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Memory loss crash victim identified

AUTHORITIES have finally identified an Asian man who lost his memory after being knocked down in a road accident five months ago.

The victim, whose name and nationality had remained a mystery, suffered post traumatic amnesia and could not recall simple details such as his country of birth.

He was also diagnosed with aphasia, meaning he lost the ability to speak.

But thanks to the intervention of the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA), officials were able to identify him within minutes.

They have refused to reveal his full details, but he has been identified as Indian Ramasamy, 42.

He is understood to have been living here illegally since 2004 when the factory he was working for closed down.

The patient was being treated in the BDF Hospital in Riffa and the hospital had failed to get anywhere despite an exhaustive search for answers.

However, once LMRA officials stepped in they were able to identify him within minutes using a fingerprint device linked to its database of expatriates.

"The LMRA was able to get his details within eight minutes from among nearly half a million expatriates," it said in a statement sent to the GDN....next