Penn Medicine News Blog Archive: Aging

With this year’s Super Bowl setting a record for being the most-viewed show in U.S. television history, concussions – more technically, mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) – have probably been on many a mind this week. TBI has long been a leading cause of death and disability, with over 1.7 million cases in the US alone each year.

Heart disease remains the number one cause of death in the US for both men and women. Heart disease, in all its forms, is responsible for over 400,000 deaths a year among women – more than all forms of cancer combined.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides exquisite structural detail of the brain, for example, to detect tumors or relative size of regions. However, current MRI methods are not capable of imaging the distribution of neurotransmitters – the brain’s chemical messengers -- across the whole brain. A new Nature Medicine paper out this week from Perelman School of Medicine researchers led by Ravinder Reddy, PhD, professor of Radiology, describes a first-of-its-kind MRI technique (GluCEST) to measure glutamate concentration and local changes across the whole brain. The technique is based on chemical exchange effects of protons in water.

Every saga needs occasional updates. TDP-43 -- a protein important in gene expression that can undergo pathologic misfolding -- is no different. Earlier reports on the protein were outlined in a Penn Med news blog, which describes its pathology and genetics related to neurodegenerative disease. But now the field is maturing and researchers are linking TDP-43 to a well-established clinical area - the role of oxidative stress in the demise of nerve cells.

The holiday party season is over. But for Maria Neimark Geffen, PhD, assistant professor of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine, the party must go on. The focus of Dr. Geffen’s research is on understanding how the brain processes sound information in the natural world....

If you're getting not-so-tech-savvy loved ones of any age new gadgets for holiday gifts this year, take a page or two from the Penn Memory Center's Cognitive Fitness program lessons. Here's what they recommended for anyone teaching a loved one to use a new gadget -- memory issues or not.

Experts from the Penn Memory Center are back from the 2011 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, held in Paris, where they presented new data and discussed the ongoing challenges in Alzheimer’s diagnosis, treatment and care and some of the ethical struggles associated with newly developed tests to predict and diagnose the disease.

Being hospitalized can be an overwhelming experience for anyone – new places, strange sounds, and complex terminology and decisions. For the elderly, who may already have problems with vision, hearing, memory, as well as physical impairments and limited mobility, a hospital experience can be even more daunting. On top of...

Misfolded TDP-43 proteins in neurons of brain tissue (brown structures indicated by arrows) Credit: Felix Geser, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Science, if anything, is incremental. It's a slow accumulation of knowledge punctuated by Eureka moments. As the years go by, one of my favorite aspects of...