DOCTORAL THESIS. There are important, long-term gains from hastening the processes around surgical interventions against epilepsy – before the disease has had too much negative impact on brain functions and patients’ lives. These are some of the findings of a thesis for which more than 500 patients were studied and followed up. “Around one third of those undergoing surgery today are children and the percentage is growing, which is encouraging.…
Using virtual environments to understand aggressive behavior
GRANT. Erik Studer is one of four young scientists at Sahlgrenska Academy who have just received postdoc scholarships from the Swedish Brain Foundation. In researching the impact of stress on aggressiveness, he uses VR headsets to study the dynamics of the brain when tense situations arise. Anger and aggressiveness are common symptoms of many psychiatric conditions and personality disorders. Researchers have a come a long way with regard to the…
Who will be our new International Director?
MISSION. After having been responsible for the faculty’s internationalization for ten years, our current International Director is making a fond farewell: “It’s been enormously stimulating to meet representatives from various university cultures and to receive new and different impulses the whole time. But now that internationalization is to continue, I feel that it will benefit from new ideas,” says Gunnar Tobin, whose replacement is now being sought by the preparatory committee.…
New findings about stem cells in the brain of patients with epilepsy
NEW STUDY. Neural stem cells have been found in epileptic brain tissue—outside the regions of the brain where they normally reside. In a group of patients who underwent surgery for epilepsy, over half had stem cells where healthy individuals do not have them, according to a study from Sahlgrenska Academy. “We have confirmed what earlier studies indicated, and gained new knowledge about molecular characteristics of these neural stem cells,” says…
New European cooperation for better measurement of the effects of Alzheimer medicines
RESEARCH. AgeCap is the only Swedish partner in a new European cooperation to examine how to better measure the effects of drugs used to fight Alzheimer’s disease. These efforts may ultimately lead to better medicines. The project is called ROADMAP, which is an acronym for “Real world Outcomes across the Alzheimer’s Disease spectrum for better care: Multi-modal data Access Platform”, and it recently kicked off with a meeting in Barcelona.…