The latest issue of Neurosciences News is now available in print and online.
Results tagged “Neurosciences News”
Consider the mind-bending truth about the human eye: with an estimated 2 million working parts that allow us to absorb images of the world around us in fractions of a second, the intricate mechanism is second only to the brain itself in complexity.
When things go wrong, however, the impact on a human life can range from annoying to devastating, with total blindness the ultimate insult. But scientists in the University of Minnesota’s recently renamed Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Neurosciences (OVNS) take up the fight daily, battling their way from questions and problems to answers and treatments.
A famous reporter was once advised to “follow the money.” Here at the University of Minnesota, tracing the journey of a $25,000 gift from Liz Hawn and her husband, Van, on its path through the Department of Neuroscience is a perfect case in point for how private donations can reignite critical research—and, ultimately, become the gift that keeps on giving.
Sometimes, it’s the quietest voice that speaks most resoundingly. So it is with many of the University of Minnesota’s donors, who, without fanfare, step up to support small research projects bent on delivering big results.
Many of these projects aren’t of the headline-yielding variety, but rather they’re studies focused on one specific aspect of a disease. The Frank and Eleanor Maslowski Charitable Trust’s recent $140,000 gift to the University’s Paul and Sheila Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Center to fund a small study on bone health in boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a perfect case in point.
A former college baseball player, Brian Kraft just wasn’t seeing the ball quite like he used to. While playing recreational softball five years post-college, he felt too clumsy—like his skills were diminishing faster than they should.
“I was just thinking there was something not right with me,” he says.
Exciting. Promising. Leading-edge. These are a few of the ways to describe the four University of Minnesota research projects that recently received funding from the Bob Allison Ataxia Research Center. The organization’s board of directors granted more than $240,000 total to four scientists.
You’re invited to be a part of Minnesota’s premier baseball charity event. Mark your calendars for the eighth annual Diamond Awards on Thursday, January 24, at Target Field.
Your annual gifts supporting research at the University of Minnesota have a real impact on treatments for patients living with disease.
Did you know that you can leave a legacy that will make a difference after your lifetime?
Seventy-five years ago, physicians couldn't rely on a CT or MRI scan to help diagnose and treat brain and nervous system diseases. Surgery often focused on immediate, practical needs, and the technology was crude. Even then, however, the diagnostic and surgical skills required for neurologic diseases differed drastically from those of general surgery. "It became increasingly difficult for general surgeons and neurosurgeons to cover for each other and provide each other the disciplinary support they needed," explains Stephen Haines, M.D., head of neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota today.
Department of Neurosurgery chair Stephen Haines, M.D., often chats with the neurosurgery training program's oldest living graduate—his own father, a retired neurosurgeon who lives in upstate New York. Because the neurosurgery program has played such a key role in both Haineses’ lives, the two men wanted to give something back.
