NEWS BRIEFS

New grant will unlock workings of brain’s waste removal system

With an eye toward developing new therapies for diseases like Alzheimer’s - a new $15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will bring together several teams of researchers to accelerate our understanding of the complex mechanics that control the glymphatic system – the brain’s waste removal system. The new research program will be led by Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., co-director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine. Nedergaard’s lab discovered the glymphatic system and subsequent research has transformed a range of how neurological disorders and critical brain functions are studied.

The program seeks to develop a detailed, mechanistic understanding how cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) moves across sleep and wakefulness and the neural processes that control it. It will also seek to deepen our understanding of how the system specifically functions in the human brain. The research teams will include a range of scientists and engineers from the University of Rochester, Penn State University, Boston University, and the University of Copenhagen. The research is being funded through The BRAIN Initiative, a massive research program supported by NIH and several other federal research agencies that aim to fill gaps in our current knowledge of the brain’s organization and function.

At-home sensors can spot Parkinson’s disease

A new study shows a device that passively monitors breathing during sleep can not only detect Parkinson’s but also track the progression of the disease over time. The researchers used an artificial intelligence tool to sift through mountains of data from study participants to find patterns that identify the disease and determine its severity.

“We have a very limited insight into how Parkinson’s disease impacts people’s daily lives,” said Ray Dorsey, M.D., professor of Neurology and co-author of the study. “This study shows that remote monitoring has the potential to identify individuals with Parkinson’s and create an objective measure of severity and progression. This could be a powerful tool to detect the disease early and conduct research more efficiently.”

The research, published in Nature Medicine, was led by Dina Katabi, Ph.D., professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Katabi worked closely with researchers at the URMC Center for Health + Technology (CHeT), including Dorsey and Chris Tarolli, M.D., assistant professor of Neurology. This study is one of several projects supported by CHeT exploring new ways to harness remote monitoring, smartphones, smartwatches, and other technologies to improve care and advance research in Parkinson’s and other diseases. The study also included researchers from the Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston University.

Mild traumatic brain injury increases risk of behavioral and emotional problems in kids

University of Rochester researchers have been at the forefront of efforts to understand how blows to the head impact the brain, including how concussions change brain structure. Now researchers have found that kids who experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI), even a mild one, have more emotional and behavioral problems than kids who do not.

The study published in NeuroImage and led by Neuroscience associate professor Ed Freedman, Ph.D., used MRI and behavioral data collected from thousands of children who participated in the Adolescence Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. They revealed children with a mild TBI experienced a 15 percent increased risk of an emotional or behavioral problem. This risk was the highest in children around ten years old of developing. Researchers found that children who had a significant hit to the head but did not meet diagnostic criteria for a mild TBI also had an increased risk of these behavioral and emotional problems. URMC is one of 21 research sites collecting data for the National Institutes of Health ABCD Study.

Dr. Seuss prose shines a light on how the brain processes speech

Researchers have expanded the understanding of how the brain engages during complex audiovisual speech perception. The study in NeuroImage describes how listening and watching a narrator tell a story activates an extensive network of brain regions involved in sensory processing, multisensory integration, and cognitive functions associated with comprehension of the story content. Understanding the involvement of this larger network gives researchers new ways to investigate neurodevelopmental disorders.

The research, led by John Foxe, Ph.D., Neuroscience department chair, used fMRI to examine the brain activity of 53 participants as they watched a video recording of a speaker reading “The Lorax.” They found that along with the previously identified sites of multisensory integration, viewing the speaker’s facial movements also enhanced brain activity in the broader semantic network and extralinguistic regions not usually associated with multisensory integration, such as the amygdala and primary visual cortex. Researchers also found activity in thalamic brain regions, which are known to be very early locations at which sensory information from our eyes and ears interact. Researchers designed this experiment with children in mind, according to the investigators who have already begun working with children and adults on the autism spectrum, in an effort to gain insight into how their ability to process audiovisual speech develops over time.

New study will explore COVID’s potential link to dementia

There is a concern in the scientific community that COVID infection may accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, resulting in a wave of dementia cases as the population ages. Several reports have highlighted the presence of cognitive and psychiatric symptoms associated with COVID infection, particularly in older adults who experienced moderate to severe infection. Other studies suggest that the COVID virus can damage the endothelial cells that line blood vessels through both direct infection and immune response. A new $3.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Aging will allow researchers to more precisely understand how the virus triggers damage in the brain and the long-term impact on cognitive performance. The research will be led by URMC neurologist Giovanni Schifitto, M.D., and a multidisciplinary team of URMC neurologists, infectious disease experts, radiologists, and computer scientists, including Nasir Uddin, Ph.D., Meera Singh, Ph.D., Miriam Weber, Ph.D., Henry Wang, M.D., Ph.D., Hongmei Yang, Ph.D., and Angela Branche, M.D.

The study will recruit 300 volunteers 65 and older who were hospitalized by a severe COVID infection, excluding individuals who required intensive care and had to be on a ventilator. Researchers will follow participants for two years with neurocognitive evaluations and advanced quantitative neuroimaging that will search for changes in white matter, blood flow, the integrity of blood vessels, and blood biomarkers of inflammation and brain injury.