"The Brain and Biotechnology" on MPR

Apostolos Georgopoulos, director of the brain sciences center and Regents professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and Harry Orr, director of the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota, were guests on 'Midmorning with Kerri Miller' Thursday, January 7th, 2010.

(from the MPR website) "The University of Minnesota has made a commitment to becoming a player in the biotech field by opening a new Medical Biosciences building. We'll hear about the latest efforts to merge genetic technology with research on the brain and even the immune system."

The broadcast may be heard in its entirety at: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/01/07/midmorning2/

BSC researchers discover PTSD biomarkers

(from "Altered neural interactions assessed by magnetoencephalography (MEG) in veterans with PTSD." by Georgopoulos A, Tan H, Lewis S, Leuthold A, Winskowski A, Engdahl B., presented at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies’ annual meeting in Atlanta, GA on November 5th, 2009)

"We have identified what we believe is among the first biological markers for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to compare a large sample of veterans with PTSD to people without PTSD, we measured their Synchronous Neural Interactions (SNIs), the functional connections among groups of brain cells. The SNIs for veterans with PTSD were much more prominent on the right side of the brain, an area called the parieto-temporal region. This shows a strong miscommunication pattern of this area with the rest of the brain. It is possibly related to PTSD’s characteristic permanent and painful memories. Veterans who have recovered from PTSD still show this pattern, but not as strongly."
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