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Tag: neurology

  • Obstructive sleep apnea may be linked to microbleeds in the brain

    Maybe you know you snore like a bear, but you don’t feel much urgency to look into it. Or maybe you have been told to wear a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine for sleep apnea, but it is just so cumbersome.A new study shows that it is important to take obstructive sleep apnea seriously now –– it could impact your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease later.Moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea is associated with a greater risk for new microbleeds in the brain, according to the study.”Cerebral microbleeds are a common finding in the aging brain,” said Dr. Jonathan Graff-Radford, professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. He was not involved in the research.Microbleeds increase with age, and people who have them have a slightly higher risk of future strokes and faster cognitive decline, Graff-Radford said. “Anything that increases microbleeds is relevant to brain aging,” he added.More evidence you need to treat sleep apneaObstructive sleep apnea is a condition in which a blockage of airways by weak, heavy or relaxed soft tissues disrupts breathing during sleep. The condition is different from central sleep apnea, in which the brain occasionally skips telling the body to breathe.There are a few ways to treat obstructive sleep apnea, including relying on oral devices that keep the throat open during sleep, regularly using a CPAP or similar machine, and having surgeries.The study has a strong methodology and should stress the importance of screening for sleep apnea to clinicians and treatment to patients, said Dr. Rudy Tanzi, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was not involved in the research.”Don’t ignore it. Do something about it,” he said. “It’s not just the immediate risk for down the road for bleeds, but also later down the road for Alzheimer’s disease as well.”Not addressing obstructive sleep apnea is a double whammy, Tanzi said. Not getting enough good-quality sleep –– which can be hard to do when your breathing is impaired during the night –– has been associated with brain aging, but the microbleeds that could result may increase the risk for dementia down the line.The study, which was published in the journal JAMA Network Open Tuesday, is observational, which means that it can only establish that obstructive sleep apnea and microbleeds are associated, not that one definitively causes the other. Further studies will need to examine if treating sleep apnea can prevent microbleeds.Know the signsWhen is it time to ask your doctor about obstructive sleep apnea?Loud, frequent snoring is a good indicator, Tanzi said. If your partner notices pauses in your breathing while you sleep or gasping and choking, that’s another sign you should look into sleep apnea.Problems during the day can be a good indicator, too. Sleepiness, trouble concentrating, irritability and increased hunger are signs you may not be getting quality sleep and that it may be time to get assessed for sleep apnea.Night sweats might also be a sign of sleep apnea, as research has shown that about 30% of people with obstructive sleep apnea have reported night sweats.Waking up at least two times in the night, teeth grinding, and morning headaches might also indicate a problem.The latest study “urges (people) to take it more seriously, because the damage that can come from obstructive sleep apnea can definitely be more severe than you think,” Tanzi said.

    CNN —

    Maybe you know you snore like a bear, but you don’t feel much urgency to look into it. Or maybe you have been told to wear a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine for sleep apnea, but it is just so cumbersome.

    A new study shows that it is important to take obstructive sleep apnea seriously now –– it could impact your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease later.

    Moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea is associated with a greater risk for new microbleeds in the brain, according to the study.

    “Cerebral microbleeds are a common finding in the aging brain,” said Dr. Jonathan Graff-Radford, professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. He was not involved in the research.

    Microbleeds increase with age, and people who have them have a slightly higher risk of future strokes and faster cognitive decline, Graff-Radford said. “Anything that increases microbleeds is relevant to brain aging,” he added.

    More evidence you need to treat sleep apnea

    Obstructive sleep apnea is a condition in which a blockage of airways by weak, heavy or relaxed soft tissues disrupts breathing during sleep. The condition is different from central sleep apnea, in which the brain occasionally skips telling the body to breathe.

    There are a few ways to treat obstructive sleep apnea, including relying on oral devices that keep the throat open during sleep, regularly using a CPAP or similar machine, and having surgeries.

    The study has a strong methodology and should stress the importance of screening for sleep apnea to clinicians and treatment to patients, said Dr. Rudy Tanzi, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was not involved in the research.

    “Don’t ignore it. Do something about it,” he said. “It’s not just the immediate risk for down the road for bleeds, but also later down the road for Alzheimer’s disease as well.”

    Not addressing obstructive sleep apnea is a double whammy, Tanzi said. Not getting enough good-quality sleep –– which can be hard to do when your breathing is impaired during the night –– has been associated with brain aging, but the microbleeds that could result may increase the risk for dementia down the line.

    The study, which was published in the journal JAMA Network Open Tuesday, is observational, which means that it can only establish that obstructive sleep apnea and microbleeds are associated, not that one definitively causes the other. Further studies will need to examine if treating sleep apnea can prevent microbleeds.

    Know the signs

    When is it time to ask your doctor about obstructive sleep apnea?

    Loud, frequent snoring is a good indicator, Tanzi said. If your partner notices pauses in your breathing while you sleep or gasping and choking, that’s another sign you should look into sleep apnea.

    Problems during the day can be a good indicator, too. Sleepiness, trouble concentrating, irritability and increased hunger are signs you may not be getting quality sleep and that it may be time to get assessed for sleep apnea.

    Night sweats might also be a sign of sleep apnea, as research has shown that about 30% of people with obstructive sleep apnea have reported night sweats.

    Waking up at least two times in the night, teeth grinding, and morning headaches might also indicate a problem.

    The latest study “urges (people) to take it more seriously, because the damage that can come from obstructive sleep apnea can definitely be more severe than you think,” Tanzi said.

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  • White House doctor offers explanation for Parkinson’s expert’s visits

    White House doctor offers explanation for Parkinson’s expert’s visits

    In a letter released late Monday night by the president’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, he confirmed that Dr. Kevin Cannard, the Parkinson’s expert who visited the White House eight times in an eight-month span, “was the neurological specialist that examined President Biden for each of his annual physicals.”

    Canard’s visits to the White House don’t represent examinations of the president, according to O’Connor’s letter. Cannard is involved in a range of care for others beyond the president at the White House, O’Connor said in his note.

    “Prior to the pandemic, and following its end, [Cannard] has held regular Neurology clinics at the White House Medical Clinic in support of the thousands of active-duty members assigned in support of White House operations,” his letter reads. “Many military personnel experience neurological issues related to their service, and Dr. Canard regularly visits the WHMU as part of this General Neurology Practice.”

    On the subject of Biden’s physical, O’Connor noted that “President Biden has not seen a neurologist outside of his annual physical.”

    MORE: Parkinson’s expert visited White House 8 times in 8 months, met with Biden’s doctor

    O’Connor also stressed that Biden’s last physical found no signs of Parkinson’s, which he detailed in a Feb. 28 letter.

    While the White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to confirm these details earlier Monday, citing privacy concerns, O’Connor said he “obtained permission from the President and Dr. Cannard to confirm the details I am sharing.”

    O’Connor offered in his letter a full-throated endorsement of Dr. Cannard and his work as the Neurology Consultant to the White House since 2012.

    “Dr. Cannard was chosen for this responsibility not because he is a movement disorder specialist, but because he is a highly trained and highly regarded neurologist here at Walter Red and across the Military Health System, with a very wide expertise which makes him flexible to see a variety of patients and problems,” he wrote.

    As ABC News reported earlier on Monday, an expert in Parkinson’s disease visited the White House eight times over an eight-month span between last July and March of this year, including one visit with the president’s personal physician, according to White House visitor logs.

    Asked repeatedly at Monday’s press briefing about Cannard, Jean-Pierre refused to say if the neurologist ever treated the president or consulted on his care, citing privacy concerns, but did say Biden was not being treated for Parkinson’s disease.

    MORE: Vice President Harris takes the stage at Essence Festival, only mentions Biden once

    “You’re refusing to say if he was here to evaluate the president or if he was consulting on the president’s health. So, what then was that meeting about?” ABC News asked.

    Jean-Pierre said she would not elaborate on the meeting “because we will not confirm or speak to names that you’re providing to me. It is out of security.”

    White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during a daily news briefing at the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on July 08, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during a daily news briefing at the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on July 08, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    As part of his annual physical exam, the president was evaluated by a neurologist who found no signs of Parkinson’s, according to a summary O’Connor released in February.

    “An extremely detailed neurologic exam was again reassuring in that there were no findings which would be consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or ascending lateral sclerosis, nor are there any signs of cervical myelopathy,” his report states.

    Overall, the February report stated Biden, 81, continued to be “fit for duty and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations.”

    White House doctor offers explanation for Parkinson’s expert’s visits originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

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  • Rumination vs. Savoring: The Neural Dynamics Between Positive and Negative Thinking – The Emotion Machine

    Rumination vs. Savoring: The Neural Dynamics Between Positive and Negative Thinking – The Emotion Machine

    Rumination is the cornerstone of depression and anxiety. It’s characterized by an excessive replaying of negative thoughts and memories. A new study finds rumination activates the same brain regions as savoring, or the replaying of positive thoughts. Can depressed people learn to use their brains’ natural abilities in a more constructive way?


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  • Psychologists find sleep can distort our memories

    Psychologists find sleep can distort our memories

    While having a good night’s sleep might help you to remember things you’re trying to remember, it can also help our brains make up entirely false memories.

    The human brain’s memory is notoriously unreliable, often missing things that were glaringly obvious or remembering things happening that never actually did. New research in the journal Royal Society Open Science reveals that sleep might help us remember things, and also remember false memories.

    These false memories often arise when people are given a list of related words to memorize, and falsely remember a word being there that would have fit the category but in fact was missing.

    Stock image of a man sleeping. Sleeping has been found to make people better at remembering lists, but also more prone to false memories.
    ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

    “We found that participants had better memory for the lists in terms of better recall of the words in the lists. But their errors were also revealing—they made fewer random errors (intrusions), and more errors that suggest that they had learned the gist of the lists,” Gareth Gaskell, a professor of sleep psychology at the University of York in England, told Newsweek.

    The researchers tested 488 participants on their ability to recall a list of words 12 hours after seeing them, with some of the participants being allowed to sleep in the 12-hour interim.

    They found that those who had slept remembered more of the words on the list than those who had not, but they were also more likely to give words that weren’t on the list, but were related. The related incorrect words are known as “lure words,” while completely unrelated incorrect words are known as “intrusions.” If a list contained words like nurse, hospital and sick, the false memories may include lure words like doctor.

    “The results suggest an intriguing combination of effects. The sleep and wake groups were well-matched in the number of total responses after the 12-hour delay. Despite this, the sleep participants were more accurate in their veridical (truthful) memory of the studied list words, as well as more gist-like in their incorrect responses—a greater lure-to-intrusion ratio,” the authors wrote in the paper.

    This suggests that sleep has a complex role in memory, influencing not only how well memories are retained but also potentially the nature of the memory.

    “Memories in some ways are more about our future than our past. What we want is knowledge about our past that can be applied in a generalized way to help us to deal with future events,” Gaskell said.

    “Future events won’t be identical to the past events, so a gist-like representation might actually be more useful than a ‘perfect’ detailed representation. So what sleep might be doing is helping us to store memories in a gist-like way that can then be better applied to our future interactions.”

    The researchers also found that the results varied based on the time of day that the participants were remembering the list, with both groups suggesting more incorrect and unrelated words in the evening.

    “We found an unexpected time-of-day effect, such that completing free recall in the evening led to more intrusions—neither studied nor lure words,” the authors describe in the paper.

    “Above and beyond this time-of-day effect, the sleep participants produced fewer intrusions than their wake counterparts. When this was statistically controlled for, the sleep participants falsely produced more critical lures. They also correctly recalled more studied words, regardless of intrusions.”

    The authors do recognize several limitations of their study, namely that all participants were aged between 18 and 25, and that the tests were performed online, meaning that other distractions and environments could not be controlled.

    However, they hope that their research paves the way to new discoveries regarding sleep’s role in memory.

    “Our study provides a rich new body of evidence to help determine the contribution of sleep,” they wrote.

    Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about sleep and memory? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.