Your Weekly Dose of #5ThoughtsFriday: A description of what we think is important at BIAMD
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#5Thoughts Friday
The
Edition
2/10/2023
The HobbleJog Foundation is offering its first grant of the year, 2023 for $7500.00!
 
The HobbleJog Foundation was established to help persons with traumatic brain injuries live better lives (TBI). Supporting post-acute services that improve TBI survivors' independence, productivity, and general well-being is our main goal.
 
The deadline for submitting your application is midnight March 31st, 2023. The virtual event will be held on April, 25, 2023 at 5:00 PM Eastern time.
 
Visit their website now to find out more about our grant and how to apply. The PDF form of the grant, HERE.
 
The Alicia Cignatta Spirit of Independence Awards 
is dedicated to the memory of BIAMD's most dedicated and loving staff member who lost her battle with brain cancer in December 2018. 
Each year, these awards are presented in recognition of individuals who have made contributions to improving the quality of life for individuals with brain injury.

Awards will be presented at the BIAMD Annual Conference General Session on Thursday, March 23, 2023.
Nominations should be received by no later than March 4, 2023 to allow us adequate time to select the award recipient and make arrangements for them to receive the award. 

To nominate someone CLICK HERE
BIAMD's Brain Injury Conference
is set for 
March 23-24, 2023 
at the beautiful


INTERESTED IN SPONSORING?

For Conference Agenda
ONLINE CONFERENCE REGISTRATION IS LIVE!

TIME TO SIGN UP AND JOIN US IN MARCH!


or
Photo by Sandy Millar on unsplash
 The study published in Nature Neuroscience finds that in obese mice there is a reduction in function of the brain’s brake signal located in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. This region of the brain is involved in decision making about rewards and whether action should be taken to get rewards. 

“We all change how we value food,” says Dr. Stephanie Borgland, PhD, professor at the Cumming School of Medicine and senior author on the study. “For example, when you’re hungry, a chocolate bar is a high value food. If you were forced to eat five or six chocolate bars though, you would become averse to it. This process is called devaluation.”

Researchers have long known that the brain is integral to controlling decisions about eating, but only now have they identified the specific part of the brain involved in devaluing food changes as obesity develops. Using mice, the Borgland lab adapted three devaluation methods commonly used to examine changes in goal-directed behaviour in obese mice. 

“We discovered that if we essentially turned off the brake signal in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, then our lean mice continued to work for sucrose even though they just consumed enough to be fully sated,” says Dr. Lauren Seabrook, PhD candidate and the lead investigator of this study, “When we restored normal activity in the orbitofrontal cortex of obese mice, mice regained the ability to devalue the sucrose and control over eating habits.”

CLICK HERE to read more about the study.
Photo by Anthony Tran on unsplash
A good night’s sleep is crucial to health and well-being. Numerous research studies have shown that insomnia can increase the risk of cardiovascular events, obesity, diabetes and other illnesses. 
Now, a new study from researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine shows significant improvements in not only sleep quality, but also in improved autonomic nervous system function using a closed-loop, acoustic stimulation neurotechnology.
The study is published online in Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health.

Cereset ResearchTM with Standard Operating Procedures (CR-SOP) is the evolution of HIRREM®, or high-resolution, relational, resonance-based electroencephalic mirroring, a noninvasive, closed-loop technology that uses scalp sensors to monitor brainwaves and software algorithms to translate specific frequencies into audible tones of varying pitch.

These tones linked to brainwaves are echoed back in real time via earbuds. This allows the brain a chance to listen to itself, to look at itself in an acoustic mirror.

“CR-SOP allows the brain to reset from stress patterns that contribute to insomnia,” said Charles H. Tegeler, M.D., chair of neurology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “During the intervention, the brain continuously updates with respect to its own activity patterns, resulting in auto-calibration or self-optimization.”


CLICK HERE to read more.
The Elville Webinar Series Presents on Friday, February 17th:

The Essentials of Estate Planning and Elder Law

10:00am-11:30am


CLICK HERE to Register!
The brain is an exceptionally complex organ. It forms and trims neural connections in ways that are mysterious yet unquestionably shape development, memory, and processing. It’s also highly resilient—people born without large chunks of their brains can turn out just fine, possibly due to the organ’s ability to reroute neural connections early in life.

But when the brain is injured and its resiliency pushed to a limit, there is only so much modern medicine can do. When blood flow to the brain is blocked like in the case of a stroke, brain tissue can die, leaving a husk of what was once there that is difficult to rewire.

Isaac Chen, a neurosurgery researcher and clinician at the University of Pennsylvania, has been interested in fixing injured brains since his medical school days. To him, it seems like the key to unlocking how to heal the brain lies in the organ’s structure.

“I don't think that throwing in cells that lack any structure will ultimately be able to restore function optimally,” Chen told The Daily Beast. “And so that’s why we looked at organoids: More than anything else that I know of right now other than the brain itself, organoids have that structure of the brain.”


CLICK HERE and to read more.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME’S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2022 •

There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much?
 
CLICK HERE to see more.
1) Quote We are Contemplating
“Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us.”
Looking for Something fun to do in Maryland this weekend?



Click the picture below and discover a world of possibilities for things to do this weekend!
Photo by Reba Spike on Unsplash

HAVE A WONDERFUL
WEEKEND!

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 Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful weekend.