Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science

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News from Carney

Moving to a multifaceted view of dementia

On September 23, Edward “Ted” Huey, M.D., joined some of the nation’s leading experts on Alzheimer’s disease at the National Institute on Aging to help set research priorities and to present his work. Huey’s main message: Memory loss is not the only sign of this common and devastating disease.
Each person is just six or fewer social connections away from anyone else in the world. That’s the social psychology concept of six degrees of separation, an idea born around a century ago when telephones and airplanes dramatically shrank the distance between people — and rapidly expanded social networks.
Dopaminergic therapy and deep brain stimulation can improve the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD). But both treatments can make patients more impulsive. In a new study, Carney researchers combined experimental testing with computational modeling to uncover two different routes the two treatments take to modify decision-making.
Many people are wired to seek and respond to rewards. Your brain interprets food as rewarding when you are hungry and water as rewarding when you are thirsty. But addictive substances like alcohol and drugs of abuse can overwhelm the natural reward pathways in your brain, resulting in intolerable cravings and reduced impulse control.