Functional movement/conversion disorder (FMD), part of the spectrum of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), is a neuropsychiatric condition marked by a range of neurological symptoms, including tremors, muscular spasms and cognitive difficulties. Despite being the second most common cause of referrals to neurology outpatient clinics after headache, scientists have struggled to pin down the disorder’s root cause. Female sex and a history of childhood trauma are factors associated with higher risk of developing FMD, but it’s been unclear why. A new study from investigators of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, ...

How an organization reacts to a nearby competitor adopting an important innovation may be influenced by the type and difficulty of problems it handles for its customers, according to a new study published in Strategic Management Journal. The researchers found that organizations serving more difficult customer needs tend to defer investment in response to a competitor’s technology adoption, while those who address less difficult problems are likely to accelerate adoption of that same technology. The study, led by Shirish Sundaresan, an assistant professor at Georgia State University, stresses ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – A drug called teriflunomide may delay first symptoms for people whose magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans show signs of multiple sclerosis (MS) even though they do not yet have symptoms of the disease. The preliminary study, released April 19, 2023, will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 75th Annual Meeting, being held in person in Boston and live online from April 22-27, 2023. Called radiologically isolated syndrome, the condition is diagnosed in people who do not have MS symptoms but who have abnormalities in the brain or spinal cord called lesions, similar to those seen in MS. MS ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – In people with no thinking and memory problems, a simple test may predict the risk of developing cognitive impairment years later, according to a study published in the April 19, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “There is increasing evidence that some people with no thinking and memory problems may actually have very subtle signs of early cognitive impairment,” said study author Ellen Grober, PhD, of Albert Einstein ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – People with epilepsy living in disadvantaged neighborhoods—areas with higher poverty levels and fewer educational and employment opportunities— may be more likely to have memory, thinking, and mental health problems compared to people with epilepsy living in neighborhoods with fewer disadvantages, according to new research published in the April 19, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study does not prove that living in disadvantaged neighborhoods causes ...

Surgery to relieve leg pain and disability in some people with sciatica may be better than other non-surgical treatments, but the benefits are short-lived, lasting only up to 12 months, finds an analysis of the latest evidence published by The BMJ today. What’s more, the certainty of available evidence is low to very low, prompting the researchers to suggest that surgery might only be a worthwhile option for people who feel that the rapid relief outweighs the costs and potential risks associated with surgery. Sciatica refers to pain that travels along the path of the sciatic nerve, from the lower back and down the leg. In some people, sciatica occurs ...

The long-spined sea urchin Diadema antillarum is a keystone species. Coral reefs rely on healthy sea urchins to eat algae so coral can thrive. Healthy coral means healthy fish, and their positive impacts continue up the food chain. In early 2022, long-spined sea urchins in St. Thomas began to quickly die in large numbers. Scientists rushed in to find the cause and have discovered that a microscopic parasite swarms the body and spines of the urchins, eating them alive. The culprit, a microscopic organism called a scuticociliate, appears most similar to Philaster apodigitiformis, a type of protozoan parasite. It began decimating sea urchin populations around the Caribbean, ...

The human body naturally produces opioid-like substances, such as endorphins, which block the perception of pain and increase the feeling of well-being. Similarly, opioid drugs, including morphine or fentanyl, are widely used for alleviating severe pain. However, their use is associated with a high risk of dependence and addiction, and their excessive misuse causes over 350,000 annual deaths worldwide. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have compared the action of natural and therapeutic opioids. The latter penetrate inside the cells ...

Linguists have long been interested in language variation. What are common or universal patterns across languages? What limits the possible variation between them? Grambank, the world's largest and most comprehensive database of language structure, enables researchers to answer some of these questions. Grambank was constructed in an international collaboration between the Max Planck institutes in Leipzig and Nijmegen, the Australian National University, the University of Auckland, Harvard University, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Cancer drugs that stimulate the body’s immune system to attack tumors are a promising way to treat many types of cancer. However, some of these drugs produce too much systemic inflammation when delivered intravenously, making them harmful to use in patients. MIT researchers have now come up with a possible way to get around that obstacle. In a new study, they showed that when immunostimulatory prodrugs — inactive drugs that require activation in the body — are tuned for optimal activation timing, the drugs provoke the immune system to attack tumors without the side effects that occur when the ...

MADISON – Today, foldable phones are ubiquitous. Now, using models that predict how well a flexible electronic device will conform to spherical surfaces, University of Wisconsin–Madison and University of Texas at Austin engineers could usher in a new era in which these bendy devices can integrate seamlessly with parts of the human body.  In the future, for example, a flexible bioelectronic artificial retina implanted in a person’s eyeball could help restore vision, or a smart contact lens could continuously sense glucose levels in ...

Deadly heatwaves fuelled by climate change in 2022 made almost 90 percent of Indians more vulnerable to public health issues, food shortages and increased risks of death, a new study from researchers at the University of Cambridge reported in PLOS Climate. India currently uses a national Climate Vulnerability Indicator (CVI) to measure climate vulnerability and make plans for adaptation. The CVI includes many different socioeconomic, biophysical, institutional, and infrastructural factors. But it doesn't ...

There is a growing body of evidence that iron in the brain may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. Lending weight to that idea, a new imaging probe has for the first time shown that in the same regions of the brain where the amyloid beta plaques associated with Alzheimer’s occur, there is also an increase in iron redox, meaning the iron in these regions is more reactive in the presence of oxygen. Their imaging probe could yield even more details about the causes of Alzheimer’s and help in the search for new drugs to treat it. A ...

TAMPA, Fla. (APRIL 19, 2023) – The search for the 2022 killer that decimated the long-spined sea urchin population in the Caribbean and along Florida’s east coast is over. A team of researchers organized by Mya Breitbart, Distinguished University Professor at the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science, identified a single-celled organism called a ciliate as the cause of a massive die-off event to a marine animal vital to coral reef health. Their findings were reported in Science Advances. “We’re beyond ...

APRIL 19, 2023 As Covid roared through prisons in 2020, the U.S. prison population fell by as much as 30 percent, creating the largest, fastest reduction in prison population in American history. But this decarceration disproportionately benefited white incarcerated people, sharply increasing the fraction of incarcerated Black and Latino people. A new study in Nature shows that this increased racial disparity in U.S. prisons stems in large part from a long-standing problem with the justice system: Non-white people tend ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Recent developments include effective combination therapies for patients with BRAFV600E mutations, an approach to identify cancer biomarkers in extracellular vesicles, therapeutic strategies for improving ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – As climate change causes ocean temperatures to rise, one of Greenland’s previously most stable glaciers is now retreating at an unprecedented rate, according to a new study.  Led by researchers at The Ohio State University, a team found that between 2018 and 2021, Steenstrup Glacier in Greenland has retreated about 5 miles, thinned about 20%, doubled in the amount of ice it discharges into the ocean, and quadrupled in velocity. According to the study, such a rapid change is so extraordinary ...

The Container Store, the nation’s leading retailer of storage and organization solutions, custom spaces, and in-home organizing services, will fund $10,000 in scholarships for Charisma™ Virtual Social Coaching, a strengths-based social skills training developed by Center for BrainHealth. Charisma is a personalized, avatar-driven program that provides real-time, unscripted social coaching in a safe, non-threatening virtual environment. Drawing on extensive cognitive neuroscience research, this program is demonstrated to help people with social challenges to ...

A study led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers identifies a new potential application in quantum computing that could be part of the next computational revolution. The study surveys techniques for compressing data generated by sensors in edge computing — which processes data at or near sensors — and compares classical techniques with quantum approaches, which are mostly in development. Compressing data saves storage space and network bandwidth. Classical computing stores information in bits equal to 0 or 1. Quantum computing stores information in qubits, which can exist ...

A treatment combining two antibodies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 strongly protected high-risk people with early COVID-19 symptoms from hospitalization and death in an international Phase 2/3 clinical trial conducted in the first half of 2021 and co-led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. The trial, described in a paper appearing online Apr. 18 in Annals of Internal Medicine, enrolled more than 800 non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19 at high-risk of progression of the disease in the United States and ...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—April 19, 2023—The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the largest integrated healthcare system in the nation, today announced that 60 of its 111 emergency departments have earned Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation (GEDA) from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). Another 11 departments are on track to earn the designation in coming months and the VA has plans to expand the program to the majority of its hospitals over the next three years. Geriatric emergency departments provide specialized care to older veterans and their families during and after a ...

A planetary scientist at NAU is part of a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission to travel to Mars and survey the planet’s two moons, including collecting a sample from one and returning it to Earth. Christopher Edwards, an associate professor in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, received a six-year, $650,000 grant for the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission awarded by NASA. This goal is to send an uncrewed spacecraft to Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos, to gather information about them. It also will collect surface material from Phobos, a first-of-its-kind attempt. Edwards, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Power often boosts an employee’s creativity because being powerful liberates the individual from constraints, such as worrying that their ideas will be rejected. However, new research shows that employees who are not in positions of power can become more creative when given time to “warm up” to a task by engaging in the creative task more than once.  “This is important because when people with more power are able to express their creative ideas more than those with less power, ...

A new study by public health researchers presents stark evidence that the Central African Republic (CAR) is experiencing a severe health and humanitarian emergency, with what is likely the highest measured nationwide mortality rate in the world, a rate four times higher than a 2010 United Nations estimate. The present crisis is linked to the arrival of COVID and its associated disruptions, as well as human rights abuses by the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organization, which seeks to regain national territory after a decades-long hold by rebel groups. The findings are based on a nationwide mortality survey and appear in the peer-reviewed journal Conflict ...

Although many people admire the actions of people who engage in acts of extraordinary altruism, like altruistic organ donors, bone marrow donors, and heroes who rescue people from fires or accidents, they are also often mystified at what motivates these altruists to act. A new paper from a team of Georgetown researchers aims to answer this question by mapping out the psychological profiles of a range of extreme real-world altruists, like heroic rescuers, humanitarian aid workers, and people who donate organs or bone marrow to strangers at no benefit to themselves.  “After evaluating more than 300 extreme ...