electrical activity

Some patients thought to be in vegetative states may later be assessed to have some level of awareness, and now researchers in Canada say they are able to detect consciousness in these patients cheaply and easily by measuring electrical activity in the brain.

(MedPage Today) -- A sliver-thin electronic gizmo leads off this week's lab notes; it monitors vital signs and electrical activity -- and may even serve duty in computer game playing.

(Burnham Institute) Investigators at Burnham Institute for Medical Research, UBC and UCSD have found that normal synaptic activity in nerve cells protects the brain from the misfolded proteins associated with Huntington's disease.

They also found that the drug Memantine, which is approved to treat Alzheimer's disease, successfully treated Huntington's disease in a mouse model by preserving normal synaptic electrical activity and suppressing excessive extrasynaptic electrical activity.