Your Weekly Dose of #5ThoughtsFriday: A description of what we think is important at BIAMD
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#5Thoughts Friday
The

Edition
5/12/2023
If you or someone you know is experiencing "brain fog" after COVID-19, scientists now have a possible explanation — and it might not bring much comfort.

Researchers in Germany found that part of the virus, the spike protein, remains in the brain long after the virus clears out.

These investigators discovered the spike protein from the virus in brain tissue of animals and people after death. The finding suggests these virus fragments build up, stick around, and trigger inflammation that causes long COVID symptoms.

About 15% of COVID patients continue to have long-term effects of the infection despite their recovery, said senior study author Ali Ertürk, PhD, director of the Institute for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine at the Helmholtz Center Munich in Germany.

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A new study published in Human Brain Mapping revealed that long-term musical training can modify the connectivity networks in the brain’s white matter.

Previous research has shown that intense musical training induces structural neuroplasticity in different brain regions. However, previous studies mainly investigated brain changes in instrumental musicians, and little is known about how structural connectivity in non-instrumental musicians is affected by long-term training.

To examine how the connections between different parts of the brain might be affected by long-term vocal training, the researchers of the study used graph theory and diffusion-weighted images. Graph theory is a mathematical framework used to study the networks’ architecture in the human brain, while diffusion-weighted imaging is an MRI technique that measures the diffusion of water molecules in tissues, providing information on the structural connectivity of the brain.

The researchers hypothesized that “intense musical practice that involves the interpretation of emotions could strengthen the connectivity between brain regions related to emotional expression and motor control.” Moreover, they expected to see differences in connectivity between professional singers and instrumental musicians.

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Painful diabetic neuropathy (DPN) is a chronic neuropathic pain syndrome caused by a metabolic damage of primary afferent neurons. Sensory abnormalities predominantly affecting the feet are frequent [1, 2]. The sensory symptoms patients suffer from include numbness, prickling, burning or electric shocks and vary between the individual patients.

In contrast, fibromyalgia syndrome is a chronic painful condition which is characterized by wide spread pain mainly perceived in deep somatic tissues, i.e., in muscles and joints. The definition is based on the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) classification scheme [3]. Fibromyalgia (FM) is also characterized by abnormal pain sensitivity and frequent additional comorbidities like sleep disturbances and affective disorders [4]. In contrast to classic neuropathic pain syndromes the general perception of fibromyalgia is that in this disease nerve lesions are not demonstrable [5, 6]. However there appears to be a subset of patients who additionally suffer from a neurological disease [7, 8]


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Why do human beings behave as they do?

'Awe-inspiring... You will learn more about human nature than in any other book I can think of' Henry Marsh, bestselling author of And Finally.

We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other?











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1) Quote We are Contemplating
“America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system.” 
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