The path of brain science

Advances in brain science are creating whole new fields in neurology. Find out about the latest neurology research in this Healthmaker video with Frances Jensen, MD, neurology department chair at the University of Pennsylvania.

Transcript

00:00

And I think we do a pretty poor job right now making people even recognize an epileptic seizure,

00:06

for instance, or a stroke. [RELAXING MUSIC]

00:14

We do not still have full cures for many of our disorders. We're learning about the signaling.

00:21

We're kind of where cancer research was 15 years ago, but we're poised to go faster because

00:28

the computational science is so much more advanced now. But we have now this ability to think

00:35

about the stages of diseases, actual molecules that are turning on and off and looking for therapeutic targets. But the big question is, how can we get as early

00:45

in the process as possible? An example would be that we know that stress during teen years

00:51

carries with it a higher incidence of depression later in life. So again, we know that there are some forerunners that

01:01

are risk factors that are potentially modifiable in the teen years. Epilepsy, for instance, which is a disease

01:08

of too much activation at synapses, is at much higher levels of incidence, at least, during childhood than later in adult.

01:16

So we can understand how diseases have these age-specific patterns also in thinking about the brain.

01:23

I think we're also learning more about how to apply humanism and thinking about these diseases because they get at sort of the core of somebody's identity.

01:32

We have a lot of work to do around neuropsychiatry and kind of getting the word out. And I think we do a pretty poor job right now making people

01:41

even recognize an epileptic seizure, for instance, or a stroke. Most people wouldn't even know what to look for.

01:49

We have to change that. [AUDIO LOGO]