Alzheimer disease and Vascular dementia in Singapore

Local documentary on AD and VaD.
http://video.xin.msn.com/watch/video/episode-35/2egjdwcn7

Challenging social problems in developed Asian countries

in most developed Asian countries, there are increasing concerns about low birth rate and fast ageing population. however, what is less reported but potentially societal problem is one-child family. this can be due to legal constraint or personal choice. one study published early this year examining the behaviour of "single" child in China received lots of attention in Western countries but relatively unheard of in Asian countries.

In this study, Cameron and colleagues reported that this single child is "less trusting, less trustworthy, more risk-averse, less competitive, more pessimistic, and less conscientious individuals". These are the future electorate and "leaders" of the our society. Should their parents be concerned? should the government be concerned?

Insulin drug trial on Alzheimer's patient.

Why are all these trials happening in Europe / America? While our subjects wait here for years?

Retinal Diagnostic for Alzheimer's disease

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24924488

Does ApoE affect sleep quality in AD?

ApoE - AD.
Sleep deprivate - AD
ApoE - Sleep deprive - AD ???

Brain Stimulation Turns Paralyzed Rats into Walkers, Swimmer

Interesting experiments. Can work in human?

Gene dosage and manic-behavior

Duplication of a single gene causes mice to have seizures and display manic-like behaviour. But valproate, an anticonvulsant and mood-stabilizing drug commonly used to treat bipolar disorder and epilepsy can reversed the symptoms. This suggests valproate can also help some people with hyperactivity who do not respond to common treatments.

Brain boosting drug - Ritalin

Ritalin is most often prescribed to suffers of ADHD. But a handful of students in Singapore are also using it as a "brain booster" to give them an edge over their competitors.

Read the report in today (21 Oct 2013) Straits Times.

Ketamine lifts Depression.

Is ketamine acting as antidepressant?

My favourite note-taking software

Microsoft OneNote has been around for MANY years (before Evernote). It is free if you have MS Office. It gives you offline access to your note (when you are in the air or without connection) without having to pay subscription for premier privilege. You can use your finger (or stylus) to write and annotate during discussion.

LSM4213 Lecture 10 Sleep

News:

Jet lagging everyday

How sleep deprivation destroy you?

How to gamify the lessons?

The rationale of gamification in education?
Steps to develop educational games.

Strange that Pearson in US is interested in developing games for education but not here. Maybe selling books are more profitable.

Sleep clean up your brain

Sleep was found to be a way to dispose waste toxins accumulated during a hard day's thinking. Read the news.

LSM4213 Lecture 9

Primer reading:
SfN Brain Facts - Learning and Memory

TED Seminars:
Elizabeth Loftus: The fiction of memory
How to manually change a memory: Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu
Neil Burgess: How your brain tells you where you are

Microsoft Windows thru the years

Growing up with Windows. From Poly to Uni, to work... after a brief spin with Mac, I am back to Windows again.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57607810-75/microsofts-windows-8.1-arrives-a-look-back-and-ahead/

New Research Driven Trends in Teaching

Educators are looking to research about how kids learn to influence teaching practices and tools.

Lectures on YouTube

Michael Malone (Duke University)
The Art of Storytelling

Robert Sapolsky (Stanford University)
Are human just another primate?
Schizophrenia
The uniqueness of humans

Shelly Kagan (Yale University)
How to live given the certainty of death

Angela Ahrendts (Burberry / Apple)
The power of human energy.

New Drug Development Direction for Mental Disorders

Drug company Novartis reboots new research direction.

New role for BDNF.

BDNF, exercise and brain ageing.
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2013/10/how-exercise-beefs-brain

Protein misfolding inhibitor

Small molecule to stop protein misfolding?

Depression starts very young.

Depression starts before you know.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24465624

LSM4213 Lecture 8 Mood disorders

Biopolar Disorders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ki9dgG3P5M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y91TkBanOKY

Depression
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5rcPpk05hU
Ketamine acting as antidepressant?

Schizophrenia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syjEN3peCJw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6CILJA110Y

Electro-therapy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEZrAGdZ1i8

LSM4213 Lecture 7

Primer video:
Refreshing your memory of protein folding, view the following short YouTube Videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaHHgEoa2c8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvBO3TqJ6FE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swEc_sUVz5I

Readings:

Soto (2003) Nat Rev Neurosci 4:49-60.

Skovronsky et al (2006) Annu Rev Pathol 1:151-170.

Ross & Poirier (2004) Nat Med 10(Supl):S10-S17.

Dobson (2003) Nature 426:884-890.

LSM4213 Lecture 6a

Reading Primer:
Brain Facts on Parkinson disease

Videos:
Understanding Parkinson's disease
Parkinsonian Gait Demonstration
Stem cell therapy for PD
PD and Dopamine
Deep brain stimulation for PD

Journal Articles:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23161999
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23019375
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23363512
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23950519

Seminars:
Cognition, Movement and Parkinson's Disease
Demystifying Medicine- Parkinson's Disease: from genetics to surgery
Inside the Parkinsonian Brain: Is Too Much Rhythm a Bad Thing?

worry about failure... an Asian perspective

A beautiful analysis. To succeed, you need to... http://www.techinasia.com/failure-face-asia-produce-startups-culture/

Behavioural insights

Almost all politicians are lawyers and sometime medical doctors. In Singapore, we have engineers as well. Do they understand how people behave? Do the civil services helping the government know how people behave?

Policies made by governments (not just Singapore) affect everyone. These tasks are often undertaken by economists and lawyers. They often do not know how people behave. Should we include behavioural psychologists and maybe behavioural neuroscientists in the process?

LSM4213 Lecture 4 mutations on ADAM10

ADAM10 - possibly alpha secretase.

Two rare mutations discovered that could encourage disease progression.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924113454.htm

LSM4213 Lecture 4 - inhaling insulin

Can this be a new therapy for AD?
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/diabetics-may-be-about-to-breathe-easier-TGmiOR3NRdmQIjnrtotWgA.html

LSM4213 Lecture 4 - Abeta receptor discovered

Scientists reveal how beta-amyloid may cause Alzheimer's

LSM4213 Lecture 5 (Updated)

Readings:
Prions research http://www.brainfacts.org/about-neuroscience/animals-in-research/

Videos:
Compare the different between kuru, FFI, and CJD
Kuru http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw_tClcS6To
FFI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIeTVVAEFn8&feature=youtu.be
CJD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTAmIZGpjNs
CJD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS9jKVM7ZXo

Seminars:

Crystal structure of prion protein by Vivien Yee

http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=7563

Prion biology by Charles Weissmann

http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=2622

LSM4213 Lecture 3 Dyslexia

News on managing the reading of Dyslexic kids.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24144078

LSM4213 Lecture 4- PET imaging for Tau

A new report on PET imaging for human Tau.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24142691.

LSM4213 Lecture 4

Before you start, follow this short video,
http://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/alzheimers-disease-video

An excellent site containing videos produced by HBO (yes, the movie channel HBO) on Alzheimer's disease.
http://www.hbo.com/alzheimers/

Some background information on Alzheimer's disease
http://www.alz.org/braintour/alzheimers_changes.asp
http://www.brainfacts.org/diseases-disorders/degenerative-disorders/

If you have time, the following are seminar podcasts,
Neuroimaging by Ronald Petersen http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=12328
AD and Stem Cells by Frank LeFerla http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=8259
Genetics of AD by John Hardy http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=10473
Tau by Gerard Schellenberg http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=9482
Memory loss in AD by Karen Hsiao Ashe http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=7052
AD therapy by Rudolph Tanzi http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=10088

LSM4213 Lecture 3 Readings

This brain facts page contain good readings and links to relevant journal articles on the neuroscience of language - focus of lecture 3.

Some YouTube videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5rvmczGANc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDfVsFxJXms

This will complement the slides, note and journal review article posted on IVLE.

LSM4213 Lecture 2 Readings

The following web page on brain development will provide a detailed understanding of the topics alongside the slides uploaded on IVLE. There is also a video seminar given by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore.

Remember, our Google+ session on  11 Sep 3pm.

LSM4213 Lecture 1 Readings and Podcasts

Readings:
what is healthy brain ageing?
Sirtuin Expression Delays Aging in Mice
Caloric Restriction in human.

Podcasts:
Anti-ageing medicines
Sirtuins role in Aging and diseases
ageing effects on memory
Caloric Restriction Studies in Human

Seeing how brain forms from cells

This must be the first time humans "inducing" stem cells to form "mini" brain.

http://www.nature.com/news/stem-cells-mimic-human-brain-1.13617

Memory Protein Fades With Age

An unique age-related memory protein RbAp48.

Memory Protein Fades With Age | Science/AAAS | News

Blood Biomarker for Sucide

almost anything can be found in your blood samples. the latest is to "check" if you are going to "kill" yourself. the protein is called SAT1.

http://www.nature.com/news/predictors-of-suicidal-behaviour-found-in-blood-1.13570

MRI detects dyslexia kids.

Brain imaging can "see" many things, from whether you like the products, for criminal mind, and diseases. The latest is dyslexia.

News here.

Ethics and Research go hand-in-hand

new neuroscience techniques provide more information on our memory, consciousness, etc. but do we understand the "social" implications of these techniques? the next frontier - the brain projects by US and Europe are set to develop many and more advanced brain techniques. better to understand their implications before they are widely used.

http://www.nature.com/news/us-brain-project-puts-focus-on-ethics-1.13549

Increasing the chance of education

Many MOOC including Coursera has enable youngsters from developing countries to attend lectures from universities in western countries. Previously, you need either a sponsorship or cash-rich to attend these schools. MOOCs provide individuals with strong desire to learn to have the chance to learn. However, the only uncertainty is if those developing countries recognize or appreciate this type of learning.

Sugar toxic to mice in 'safe' doses, test finds

Too much of everything is bad. So does sugar. But how much is too much? This is what is known in mice. In human?

Sugar toxic to mice in 'safe' doses, test finds

Probing the Brain’s Final Moments | Science/AAAS | News

Is this near-death experience? Hormones and neuron activity?

Probing the Brain’s Final Moments | Science/AAAS | News

The Future University?

Education is a big economy around the world. The product-delivery system of higher education has remained largely the same for almost a thousand year, since the founding of Oxford. What is the next model of disruption? Is the Minerva Project the future university model?

The neuroeconomics of simple choice: Antonio Rangel at TEDxCaltech

Combining business and neuroscience.

prions phenomenon comes to Tau diseases?

it is trending to discover change in protein conformation can cause brain diseases. mutations not needed.

http://www.alzforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=3554

Understanding cognitive ageing

The role of NMDA receptor in the cognitive ageing process. It is NR2b subunit.

News at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130807155352.htm

Blood glucose link to dementia

Even without diabetes, your blood glucose can affect your risk to develop dementia. Another connection between the central and peripheral systems.

News at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130807204835.htm

New protein discovered for organismal ageing

A new protein called HLH-30 is involved in autophagy and in turn modulate ageing in C elegans. Any equivalent in human?

News at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130808091618.htm

New reporter system for optogenetics

The protein called ArcLight is used for the first time to "view" nerve cell voltage in fruitfly.

News at Science Daily.

Cancer detection - new method using MRI

Using glucose consumption to detect cancer with MRI. How does it compare to FDG-PET?

News at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130707162759.htm

3D mapping of neuronal connectomes

Hundreds of students project hours finally pay off imaging the complicated neuronal connections and activity in mouse and fruit fly retinal system.

News at http://www.nature.com/news/visual-neurons-mapped-in-action-1.13520

LSM4213 Google+ Community

I am starting a new Google+ Community for LSM4213. Please join the community for discussion and info on module and lecture. There will be regular hangout session on Wed 3-5pm.

The name of the Google+ community is NeuroWorld LSM4213.