Recent news from The Johns Hopkins University
This section contains regularly updated highlights of the news from around The Johns Hopkins
University. Links to the complete news reports from the nine schools,
the Applied Physics Laboratory and other centers and institutes are to
the left, as are links to help news media contact the Johns Hopkins
communications offices.
You’re about to drive through an intersection when the light suddenly turns red. But you’re able to slam on the brakes, just in time.
Johns Hopkins University researchers, working with scientists at the National Institute on Aging, have revealed the precise nerve cells that allow the brain to make this type of split-second change of course. In the latest issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, the team shows that these feats of self control happen when neurons in the basal forebrain are silenced.
September 17, 2015 Tags: aging, Alzheimer's disease, brain science, Johns Hopkins University, Michela Gallagher, Nature Neuroscience, neuroscience, Parkinson's disease
| Category: Natural Sciences
Johns Hopkins University researchers have received an estimated $7.5 million National Institutes of Health grant to clinically test what would be the first treatment to prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s dementia.
September 15, 2015 Tags: Alzheimer's disease, aMCI, dementia, Johns Hopkins University, Michela Gallagher, NIH
| Category: Homewood Campus News, Institutional News, Natural Sciences
A study led by Michela Gallagher of The Johns Hopkins University and published in the May 10 issue of the journal Neuron suggests a potential new therapeutic approach for improving memory and interrupting disease progression in patients with a form of cognitive impairment that often leads to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease.
May 10, 2012 Tags: aging, Alzheimer's disease, aMCI, Amy Shelton, Arnold Bakker, Carolyn Speck, cognitive impairment, Craig Stark, epilepsy, Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, Greg Krauss, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Lauren Jones, Lennart Mucke, Marilyn Albert, memory loss, Michael Yassa, Michela Gallagher, Susan Bassett, The Johns Hopkins University, UCSF, University of California at Irvine
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Psychology, Public Health, University-Related
An existing anti-seizure drug improves memory and brain function in adults with a form of cognitive impairment that often leads to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study led by neuroscientist Michela Gallagher of The Johns Hopkins University. The findings raise the possibility that doctors will someday be able to use the drug, levetiracetam, already approved for use in epilepsy patients, to slow the abnormal loss of brain function in some aging patients before their condition becomes Alzheimer’s.
July 20, 2011 Tags: Alzheimer's disease, amnestic cognitive impairment, Arnold Bakker, brain function, Gregory Krauss, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, levetiracetam, Marilyn Albert, memory loss, Michela Gallagher, neuroscience, the National Institutes of Health
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Psychology, Public Health, Uncategorized
It’s something we just accept: the fact that the older we get, the more difficulty we seem to have remembering things. We can leave our cars in the same parking lot each morning, but unless we park in the same space each and every day, it’s a challenge eight hours later to recall whether we left the SUV in the second or fifth row. Or, we can be introduced to new colleagues at a meeting and will have forgotten their names before the handshake is over. We shrug and nervously reassure ourselves that our brains’ “hard drives” are just too full to handle the barrage of new information that comes in daily. According to a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist, however, the real trouble is that our aging brains are unable to process this information as “new” because the brain pathways leading to the hippocampus-the area of the brain that stores memories-become degraded over time. As a result, our brains cannot accurately “file” new information (like where we left the car that particular morning), and confusion results. A study on the subject appeared in the May 9 Early Online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
May 13, 2011 Tags: Alzheimer's disease, brain science, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, hippocampus, Johns Hopkins University, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, learning, memory, Michael Yassa, MRI, neuroscience, PNAS
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Psychology
Using a $1.3 million National Institutes of Health grant underwritten by the federal stimulus act, Krieger School psychologist Michela Gallagher and her team are about to embark on one of their most important studies yet: determining whether a medication commonly used to treat seizures can help improve memory and brain function in adults suffering from mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, a common precursor to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease.
January 19, 2010 Tags: aging, Alzheimer's disease, Bakker, brain sciences, dementia, Krieger School, memory loss, Psychology
| Category: Psychology, Public Health