In an advance that may speed progress toward new diagnostic tests for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (AD), scientists in New York are reporting development of the first direct method for measuring a key enzyme implicated in both of those chronic brain disorders. The study is scheduled for the Nov. 21 issue of ACS’ Journal of the American Chemical Society, a weekly publication.

A remarkable change takes place in the brains of tiny songbirds every year, and some day the mechanism controlling that change may help researchers develop treatments for age-related degenerative diseases of the brain such as Parkinson’s and dementia.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School and Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center have identified a noninvasive and painless way to diagnose complex brain diseases. And it’s as simple as staring at a point of light. The research offers promise for a less-stressful, painless, and objective diagnosis for brain diseases, as well as a way to measure the effectiveness of different treatments for these diseases.

Until recently physicians have had to rely on time-consuming and uncertain behavioural examinations to diagnose the onset of brain diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and schizophrenia.

With ethical issues concerning use of discarded embryos and technical problems hindering development of stem cell therapies, scientists in Korea are reporting the first successful use of a drug-like molecule to transform human muscle cells into nerve cells.

The disease that causes tremors, rigidity and slowed movements in a million Americans also targets another brain network that regulates cognitive thought and the ability to carry out everyday tasks.

A recent study in Journal of Neuroimaging suggests that cognitively normal adults exhibiting atrophy of their temporal lobe or damage to blood vessels in the brain are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Older adults showing signs of both conditions were seven-times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than their peers.

Increasing the amount of SUMO, a small protein in the brain, could be a way of treating diseases such as epilepsy and schizophrenia, reveal scientists at the University of Bristol, UK. Their findings are published online today in Nature.

Researchers at the McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida have initiated a project to treat human brain and other diseases by plundering the secrets of regeneration from creatures with remarkable powers of self-renewal, such as salamanders, newts, starfish and flatworms.