Look around, and you'll see that journalists regularly get the inside skinny from UTMB sources. In the hope of understanding more about pain perception, researchers are studying changes in spinal cord nerve cells that transmit pain messages to the brain. By recording electrical activity from pain-relaying cells in the spinal gray matter, UTMB's William D. Willis and his colleagues have shown that these nerve cells respond intensely not only to sensory signals from an injury site, but also to messages from adjacent uninjured areas. These hyperactive responses last for some time, Willis said, suggesting that the spinal cord neurons have been sensitized, a process that looks a lot like short-term memory. A number of other newspapers reprinted this story.
Depression is an illness, just like heart disease is an illness, the common cold is an illness.
With 30 percent of Texas' elderly located in underserved rural areas, Dr. David Chiraboga thought a telemedicine practice would be worth a try. Chiraboga, a professor and chairman of the department of health promotion and gerontology, has now received three grants to study use of telemedcine with elderly patients. The early results are promising, he says. Zinc and iron, which are found in red meats, are vital to brain functioning. They are also two nutrients lacking in many children's diets.