Patients who undergo numerous CT scans over their lifetime may be at increased risk for cancer, according to a study published in the April issue of Radiology. “We found that while most patients accrue small cumulative cancer risks, 7 percent of the patients in our study had enough recurrent CT imaging to raise their estimated cancer risk by 1 percent or more above baseline levels,” said Aaron Sodickson, M.D., Ph.D., assistant director of Emergency Radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and researcher at the Center for Evidence-Based Imaging in Boston. “The techniques implemented in our study can be used to identify higher risk patients who might benefit from enhanced radiation protection efforts.” [continue reading…]

It is Brain Awareness Week. Sadly traumatic brain injury has seen extensive coverage in the world’s media with the tragic death of Natasha Richardson, as a result there now is a greater awareness of how traumatic brain injury which may initially only cause temporary confusion and headache, can be fatal. Immediate treatment is essential after a brain injury because the initial damage caused by swelling often is irreversible

I am personally touched by this family’s sadness. 18 months ago I received a telephone call that is every parents worst nightmare. My son had sustained a traumatic brain injury after hitting his head in a fall. He briefly lost consciousness and was admitted to hospital where he was found to have bleeding in the brain. His injury was potentially fatal. My son didn’t understand the severity of his injuries, and wanted to leave hospital but the immediate medical intervention and thorough assessment is why I know my son is alive today. For 24 hours we waited to see if the bleeding would stop or if surgery to relieve pressure was necessary. The bleeding stopped. My wife and I spent 3 very worrying days with our son in ICU (who kept insisting he was fine and couldn’t understand why he was there). I am so thankful because my story has a happy ending; my son has made a 100% recovery. My heartfelt condolences go out to the Richardson/ Redgrave families.

You went to a wedding yesterday. The service was beautiful, the food and drink flowed and there was dancing all night. But people tell you that you are in hospital, that you have been in hospital for weeks, and that you didn’t go to a wedding yesterday at all.

The experience of false memories like this following neurological damage is known as confabulation. The reasons why patients experience false memories such as these has largely remained a mystery. Now a new study conducted by Dr Martha Turner and colleagues at University College London, published in the May 2008 issue of Cortex offers some clues as to what might be going on.

The authors studied 50 patients who had damage to different parts of the brain, and found that those who confabulated all shared damage to the inferior medial prefrontal cortex, a region in the centre of the front part of the brain just behind the eyes.

“The patients who confabulated had varying levels of memory ability, and varying levels of “executive functioning” (the set of cognitive abilities overseen by the prefrontal cortex that control and regulate other abilities and behaviours), so confabulation cannot be as simple as a combination of these deficits. Instead it must be due to a specific function controlled by the inferior medial prefrontal cortex. Damage to this region appears to lead to the convincing experience of false memories” says Martha Turner, corresponding author for this study.

This study has implications for our understanding of how the human brain controls memory, and how most of us are able to easily tell apart true memories from things we have imagined, dreamed or invented.

Source: AlphaGallileo. The article “Confabulation: Damage to a specific inferior medial prefrontal system” by Martha S. Turner, Lisa Cipolotti, Tarek A. Yousry and Tim Shallice, and it appears in Cortex, Volume 44, Issue 6 (May 2008), pp 637-648, published by Elsevier Masson, in Italy. Full text of the article featured above is available upon request. v.brancolini@elsevier.com to obtain a copy.