Tag: Nervous System

The body is a series of checks and balances. This is true of muscles that push and countering muscles that pull. It is also...

Scientists report in Nature Neuroscience they have identified an underlying cause of dangerous immune suppression in people with high level spinal cord injuries and...

A newly discovered pathway leading to the regeneration of central nervous system (CNS) brain cells (neurons) in a type of roundworm (C. elegans) sheds...

Autonomic Dysreflexia is a life threatening condition that can cause death. The most common causes of Autonomic Dysreflexia are bladder and bowel distension. Signs and Symptoms:...

Injuries to the central nervous system — the brain and spinal cord — are particularly devastating because the body doesn’t regenerate neurons to repair connections between vital circuits...

People who get serious spinal cord injuries have to adjust to a lot. That may be why, in the first year after their injuries, they are at serious risk for a potentially fatal condition called autonomic dysreflexia. Autonomic dysreflexia shows that the body can take itself down if its signals are ignored.

Autonomic dysreflexia often goes unrecognised in patients with spinal cord injury. Health professionals must be able to recognise when patients are at risk. A young patient with tetraplegia arrives in the emergency department with a severe headache, dilated pupils, beads of sweat on their forehead, chest pain, bradycardia and a blood pressure of 280/130. What do you think is happening? Recreational drug use? A hypertensive crisis with a renal, endocrine or neurological cause? Is your immediate response to carry out an electrocardiogram and blood tests? In fact, this life-threatening emergency could be caused by something as simple as a full bladder.

The nervous system controls movement, sensation, thinking and behavioral activities. It consists of various elements which comprise the whole complex working process. It is...

Motor commands issued by the brain to activate arm muscles take two different routes. As the research group led by Professor Silvia Arber at...

Finding a solution for brain and spinal cord injury The Fournier lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute is working to answer a fundamental question: what...