A few good links

Biorxiv .    

Biorix is an open access repository for pre-print articles, hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory  The above link is a search for articles related to parkinson’s Disease, but there are many other fields covered. Their motto or subtitle is “Advancing the frontiers of biology through research & education.”

The Science of Parkinson’s blog

The Science of Parkinson’s is a blog run by a fellow named Simon who likes to include interesting graphics with his posts.. Also has a Facebook page, where mainly  posts link to the blog entries a they come out Facebook page

PubMed  

PubMed comprises more than 28 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites. If you like to read the full articles and not just the abstracts, this is the place to go: PubMed Help on getting journal articles. 

Or if you’re as lazy as I am, just choose the Open Access and last 10 years filters.

Reward Deficiency Syndrome

I’ve been reading on a couple of topics recently – One is basically on music training and neuro-rehabilitation in neuro-degenerative diseases. The other is on what is theorized as the reward system in the brain, which includes the dopamine generating neurons, and the deficiency of dopamine, which factors into several different conditions. apparently ADHD, addictions to substances such as alcohol and cocaine, and narcolepsy are included.  (What? no mention of Parkinson’s?)

The article appears in Volume 1, issue 1,  2015, of the Journal of Reward Deficiency Synddromne at http://dx.doi.org/10.17756/jrds.2015-002  which is an online journal focused primarily on addictions and treatments. Other, more recent articles can be accessed freely. Worth a look, if ADHD and addictions are your field of interest.

As someone with a narcolepsy without cataplexy diagnosis, the article is interesting, especially since I have never been diagnosed as ADHD, which the authoors theorize are closely connected. Howewver, as one who has been known to multi-task well in the past, perhaps the ADHD element was never noticed because of my high IQ (g-intelligence, as some would call it). I could get away with reading Mad magazine in geometry class, tucked inside my  textbook, because I could keep up with the class while shifting my attention between the magazine, the teacher’s explanations, and the drawings on the chalkboard. Now, having slowed down due to Parrkinson’s, it might be apparent in he number of tasks started and left undone, the distractions of Facebook, and a general disorder.

Anyway, worth a thought or two of considefration…