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FooFoo's Ballet Dream

BIG NEWS! ✨🐰💃

I’m SO excited to announce that FooFoo’s Ballet Dream is officially out NOW on Kindle and paperback! 🎉📖

This isn’t just a story—it’s a journey of passion, perseverance, and believing in yourself. FooFoo isn’t like the other rabbits in the meadow. While they dig and hop, she dreams of twirling and leaping across the stage. With the support of her friends—Squeaky the squirrel, Tilly the turtle, and Benny the bird—she learns that with courage and determination, anything is possible!

If you’re looking for a sweet and inspiring bedtime story (or the perfect gift for a young dreamer), this book is for you!

📚 Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1966865937

I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts and see little readers enjoying FooFoo’s adventure! Tag me if you do! 💕 #ChildrensBooks #Storytime #BalletDreams #FollowYourDreams #ReadingIsMagic

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✨BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!✨

AHH! I can’t contain my excitement—FooFoo’s Ballet Dream is officially out NOW on Kindle AND in paperback! 📖🐰💃

Follow FooFoo, the most determined little bunny, as she twirls, leaps, and chases her dream of becoming a ballerina! With the love of her friends and a heart full of courage, she shows us all that passion + perseverance = MAGIC! ✨

If you need an inspiring bedtime story or the perfect gift for a young reader, this book is for YOU! 💕

📚 Grab your copy here: https://a.co/d/16zwpjg

I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts and see adorable little readers enjoying it—tag me if you do! 🥰📸

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FooFoo's Ballet Dream

Exciting News! I’m thrilled to announce that FooFoo’s Ballet Dream is now available in both Kindle and paperback! This heartwarming story follows FooFoo, a little rabbit with a big dream to become a ballerina. With the support of her friends and a lot of determination, she proves that anything is possible with passion and perseverance. Whether you’re looking for an inspiring bedtime story or a gift for a young reader, FooFoo’s Ballet Dream is a tale of courage, friendship, and following your dreams. Get your copy today: https://a.co/d/7ZeVUo9 I’d love to hear your thoughts and see little readers enjoying the story!

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Sleep Deprived Brains May Be Asleep and Awake at the Same Time

For something that can occupy such a significant chunk of time, sleep still remains a mysterious part of our lives. Although it is known to play a role in mental and physical health, such as metabolism and memory, there is much that is still not well understood.

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Eye Test Could Help Diagnose Autism

A new study out in European Journal of Neuroscience could herald a new tool that helps physicians identify a sub-group of people with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The test, which consists of measuring rapid eye movements, may indicate deficits in an area of the brain that plays an important role in emotional and social development.

“These findings build upon a growing field of research that show that eye movement could serve as a window into a part of the brain that plays a role in a number of neurological and development disorders, such as Autism,” said John Foxe, Ph.D., director of the University of Rochester Medical Center Del Monte Neuroscience Institute and co-author of the study.  

ASD is characterized by a wide range of symptoms that can vary in severity from person to person. This unpredictability not only presents a challenge for diagnosis, but also how best to devise a course of treatment. Identifying the specific phenotype of the disorder is, therefore, an essential first step to providing effective care.

Eye movements and the mechanisms by which the brain controls and processes what we choose to look at have been a major focus of neuroscience researchers for decades. The rapid eye movements we make when we shift our attention from one object to another, known as saccades, are essential to navigating, understanding, and interacting with the world around us. In healthy individuals, these saccades are rapid, precise, and accurate, redirecting the line of sight from one point of interest to another.

The potential relevance of eye movement in individuals with Autism is the area of the brain that controls these actions, a densely-packed structure of neurons known as the cerebellum. Traditionally considered to play a role in motor control, the cerebellum is now known to be essential to emotion and cognition via its connections to the rest of the brain. There is growing evidence that the structure of the cerebellum is altered in a sub-population of individuals with ASD.

In a series of experiments, the authors of the current study tracked the eye movements of individuals with ASD. The participants were asked to track a visual target that appeared in different locations on the screen. The experiment was designed in a manner that often caused the participant’s focus to “overshoot” the intended target. In healthy individuals, the brain would correctly adjust eye movements as the task is repeated. However, the eye movements of individuals with ASD continued to miss the target suggesting that the sensory motor controls in the cerebellum responsible for eye movement were impaired.

The inability of the brain to adjust the size of eye movement may not only be a marker for cerebellum dysfunction, but it may also help explain the communication and social interaction deficits that many individuals with ASD experience.

“These finding suggest that assessing the ability of people to adapt saccade amplitudes is one way to determine whether this function of the cerebellum is altered in ASD,” said Edward Freedman, Ph.D. an associate professor in the URMC Department of Neuroscience and co-author of the study. “If these deficits do turn out to be a consistent finding in a sub-group of children with ASD, this raises the possibility that saccade adaptation measures may have utility as a method that will allow early detection of this disorder.”

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Would you get IV Therapy for a Hangover?

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A Water Sommelier? Okay!

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What is a Clinical Trial?

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#California Residents! Do you have an Inguinal #Hernia? If so you may qualify for a #clinicaltrial currently being conducted at Prestige Surgery Center. Must be 18 y/o or older with inguinal hernia and in good health. Call 949-278-4011 for a preliminary evaluation.

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#California Residents! 

Do you have an Inguinal #Hernia? If so you may qualify for a clinical trial currently being conducted at Prestige Surgery Center Must be 18 y/o or older with inguinal hernia and in good health. 

Call 949-278-4011 for a preliminary evaluation.

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Inguinal Hernia?

Prestige Surgery Center & the American institute of research are currently enrolling patients for a new study testing a medication that may help pain after hernia surgery. Qualified participants may: Receive hernia surgery at no cost, receive compensation. for time and travel.

Must be 18 y/o or older with inguinal hernia and in good health. Call 949-278-4011 or go to https://ata.wishpond.com/signup/ for a preliminary evaluation.

(California residents only)

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With an estimated 170 Americans dying every single day from drug overdoses, the Trump Administration is finally preparing to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. Unfortunately, we have seen very little policy action follow.  

We need to do better.

This Issue Time will focus on the complexities of addressing this problem, which populations and communities feel the most impact, the role of healthcare and drug treatment centers, and what we can do to support solutions to stop it.     

Ask our panel of experts a question now

Austin Eubanks is an expert in the addiction treatment industry and a nationally recognized speaker and media contributor on topics surrounding behavioral health and addiction recovery. He is the Chief Operations Officer for Foundry Treatment Center, on the board of directors for Stout Street Foundation, a member of the founding board of directors for 5280 High School, and a featured member of Speakers for Change.

An injured survivor of the Columbine shooting, Austin’s traumatic experience as a teen was the catalyst to his painful journey through addiction. Now in long-term recovery, he has devoted his career to helping those who have turned to substances as a result of trauma. Austin has spoken to hundreds of thousands across the nation regarding his personal journey, as well as strategies for addressing the issues of substance abuse plaguing the nation.

Christopher M. Jones serves as Acting Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science and Data Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at the US Department of Health and Human Services. The Office of Science and Data Policy is the HHS focal point for policy research, analysis, evaluation, and coordination of public health, science, and data policy activities, and provides authoritative advice and analytical support to HHS leadership on public health, science, and data policy issues and initiatives. Prior to joining ASPE, Dr. Jones served as senior advisor in the Office of the Commissioner at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dr. Jones previously led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) drug abuse and overdose activities where he focused on strategic policy development and implementation, engaging national and state partners, and conducting research to improve policy and clinical practice. Dr. Jones has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications on the topic of drug abuse and overdose.

Pastor Greg Delaney is the current Outreach Coordinator for Woodhaven Ohio, a safe place to recover from substance abuse disorders. He is a frequent faith partner for the Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s Statewide Outreach on Substance Use as well as West Virginia’s Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s Combating Addiction with Grace initiative

Our panelists will begin to answer your question this Friday, December 1.

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(Image caption: Two Aplysia sensory neurons with synaptic contacts on the same motor neuron in culture after isolation from the nervous system of Aplysia. The motor neuron has been injected with a fluorescent molecule that blocks the activity of a specific Protein Kinase M molecule. Credit: Schacher Lab/Columbia University Medical Center)

Select Memories Can Be Erased, Leaving Others Intact

Different types of memories stored in the same neuron of the marine snail Aplysia can be selectively erased, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and McGill University and published in Current Biology.

The findings suggest that it may be possible to develop drugs to delete memories that trigger anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) without affecting other important memories of past events.

During emotional or traumatic events, multiple memories can become encoded, including memories of any incidental information that is present when the event occurs. In the case of a traumatic experience, the incidental, or neutral, information can trigger anxiety attacks long after the event has occurred, say the researchers.

“The example I like to give is, if you are walking in a high-crime area and you take a shortcut through a dark alley and get mugged, and then you happen to see a mailbox nearby, you might get really nervous when you want to mail something later on,” says Samuel Schacher, PhD, a professor of neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry at CUMC and co-author of the paper. In the example, fear of dark alleys is an associative memory that provides important information—e.g., fear of dark alleys—based on a previous experience. Fear of mailboxes, however, is an incidental, non-associative memory that is not directly related to the traumatic event.

“One focus of our current research is to develop strategies to eliminate problematic non-associative memories that may become stamped on the brain during a traumatic experience without harming associative memories, which can help people make informed decisions in the future—like not taking shortcuts through dark alleys in high-crime areas,” Dr. Schacher adds.

Brains create long-term memories, in part, by increasing the strength of connections between neurons and maintaining those connections over time. Previous research suggested that increases in synaptic strength in creating associative and non-associative memories share common properties. This suggests that selectively eliminating non-associative synaptic memories would be impossible, because for any one neuron, a single mechanism would be responsible for maintaining all forms of synaptic memories.

The new study tested that hypothesis by stimulating two sensory neurons connected to a single motor neuron of the marine snail Aplysia; one sensory neuron was stimulated to induce an associative memory and the other to induce a non-associative memory.

By measuring the strength of each connection, the researchers found that the increase in the strength of each connection produced by the different stimuli was maintained by a different form of a Protein Kinase M (PKM) molecule (PKM Apl III for associative synaptic memory and PKM Apl I for non-associative). They found that each memory could be erased – without affecting the other — by blocking one of the PKM molecules.

In addition, they found that specific synaptic memories may also be erased by blocking the function of distinct variants of other molecules that either help produce PKMs or protect them from breaking down.

The researchers say that their results could be useful in understanding human memory because vertebrates have similar versions of the Aplysia PKM proteins that participate in the formation of long-term memories. In addition, the PKM-protecting protein KIBRA is expressed in humans, and mutations of this gene produce intellectual disability.

“Memory erasure has the potential to alleviate PTSD and anxiety disorders by removing the non-associative memory that causes the maladaptive physiological response,” says Jiangyuan Hu, PhD, an associate research scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at CUMC and co-author of the paper. “By isolating the exact molecules that maintain non-associative memory, we may be able to develop drugs that can treat anxiety without affecting the patient’s normal memory of past events.”

“Our study is a ‘proof of principle’ that presents an opportunity for developing strategies and perhaps therapies to address anxiety,” said Dr. Schacher. “For example, because memories are still likely to change immediately after recollection, a therapist may help to ‘rewrite’ a non-associative memory by administering a drug that inhibits the maintenance of non-associative memory.”

Future studies in preclinical models are needed to better understand how PKMs are produced and localized at the synapse before researchers can determine which drugs may weaken non-associative memories.

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First Randomized Controlled Trial of DBS for Chronic Pain Shows Promise

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the ventral striatum/anterior limb of the internal capsule is safe and feasible in addressing the affective component of pain in patients with post-stroke pain syndrome.

So reported Cleveland Clinic investigators from the first prospective, randomized, controlled trial of DBS for neuropathic pain in a presentation at the 2017 annual scientific meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. The study is also published in the May 2017 issue of Annals of Neurology.

“We showed that active versus sham DBS of the ventral striatum/anterior limb of the internal capsule produced significant improvements in multiple outcome measures associated with the affective sphere of chronic pain,” says lead investigator Andre Machado, MD, PhD, a neurosurgeon and Chairman of Cleveland Clinic’s Neurological Institute. “This trial represents a paradigm shift in chronic pain management in that it targeted neurostimulation to brain structures related to the affective, rather than sensory, sphere of chronic pain.”

Departure from an analgesia-based focus

Dr. Machado sees that as the investigation’s key point of distinction, since previous studies of DBS and other forms of neurostimulation for pain have focused nearly exclusively on modulation of pain transmission and pain amplitude.

“In this study, we departed from an analgesia-based approach and focused on neural networks related to control of emotion and behavior,” he explains, “based on our hypothesis that modulating the affective sphere of pain would improve quality of life or relieve pain-related disability, with or without attenuation of pain intensity.”

An intricate study design

To test that hypothesis, Dr. Machado and his team designed their investigator-initiated study as a six-month, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial.

They enrolled 10 Cleveland Clinic patients with longstanding post-stroke pain syndrome who had hemibody pain and anesthesia dolorosa secondary to a contralateral lesion. “We chose post-stroke pain syndrome because it is associated with severe, refractory pain and patients with this syndrome are in need of therapies to alleviate suffering and disability,” notes Dr. Machado. “Because these patients have complete or near-complete damage to the sensory-discriminative pathways, they also provided a unique model for studying the effects of neuromodulation specifically on brain networks related to emotion and behavior control.”

All patients underwent bilateral implantation of electrode array leads through the anterior limb of the internal capsule (ALIC) into the ventral striatum (VS), with tips about 3 to 5 mm ventral to the junction of the ALIC and anterior commissure (see image at top of post). Surgical targeting was based on the investigators’ experience with DBS for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and treatment-resistant depression. “We targeted the VS/ALIC because of its well-established role in controlling emotion and behavior and the documented safety of DBS in this brain region for treating OCD and treatment-resistant depression,” Dr. Machado explains.

One month after implantation, patients were randomized to active DBS or sham for three months and then crossed over to the other arm for another three months. After this blinded phase, patients underwent an 18-month open stimulation phase (without sham control).

The primary end point was a ≥50 percent improvement in the Pain Disability Index (PDI) in at least 50 percent of patients with active DBS compared with sham. Secondary end points included the willingness of patients to undergo treatment again if the same outcomes would be achieved as well as scales for evaluating the affective dimension of pain: the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRAS), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the McGill Pain Questionnaire.

The study had no commercial sponsorship and was supported by the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Results: Efficacy specific to affective components

Nine of the 10 enrollees completed randomization and were included in the primary analysis. Mean patient age was 51.3 years, mean time since stroke was 4.7 years and mean pain intensity was 8.5 on a 0-10 scale.

The study was negative for its primary and secondary end point, with no significant difference seen in pain-related disability on the PDI between active and sham treatment during the blinded stimulation phase. However, significant differences in favor of active DBS were seen in multiple outcomes associated with the affective dimension of chronic pain, including:

Increased probability of response (≥50 percent improvement) on the MADRS and BDI instruments

Increased probability of response (≥50 percent improvement) on the McGill instrument’s indices for affective pain rating and present pain intensity

Willingness by five of the nine randomized patients to undergo the procedure again if they were to derive the same benefits

Three serious adverse events were deemed to be related to DBS — a seizure, a case of wound dehiscence and an infection — all of which resolved.

The case for a shift in surgical targeting

“Although the primary end point was not achieved, the efficacy of DBS was manifested by significant improvements in indices of the affective component of pain, such as depression, anxiety and quality of life,” Dr. Machado observes. “These improvements — achieved without significant reductions in the amplitude of pain — corroborate our hypothesis and suggest that DBS of the VS/ALIC specifically modulated the affective sphere of pain in patients with post-stroke pain syndrome.”

The findings suggest that analgesia may not be the appropriate treatment goal in central pain syndromes, Dr. Machado notes. “We contend that neuromodulation therapies should focus on reducing pain-related suffering or disability rather than pain intensity,” he says. “We propose a shift in surgical targeting away from neural networks underlying the sensory-discriminative domain toward the networks that mediate the affective-motivational sphere of chronic pain.”

What’s next?

He adds that his team’s future work will involve analyzing functional neuroimaging and neurophysiological data obtained during this study to develop objective biomarkers that could help improve patient selection. These data will also be used to examine the neural substrates underlying how DBS impacts the affective aspect of pain.

The team also plans to apply for funding to initiate a multicenter study to confirm these findings elsewhere and potentially expand the study population to include patients with other types of chronic pain. “We believe the present findings justify further investigation of this treatment approach,” Dr. Machado concludes.