The work done by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine faculty members (and even some students) is regularly highlighted in newspapers, online media outlets and more. Below you’ll find links to articles and videos of Feinberg in the news.
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Researchers looked at the concussion history of 87 football players at Penn State University. They also checked the players for certain genes. The findings suggest that “genotype may play a role in your susceptibility for getting a concussion,” said co-corresponding author Dr. Hans Breiter. He’s a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago. “In dyslexia, you tend to have less-defined wiring for processing spoken and written language,” Breiter said in a university news release. “Dyslexics have a problem with that. Their wiring is more diffuse in this system. Future studies could directly test if diffuse wiring is better able to absorb a shockwave than clearly defined wiring.”
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“This is an important problem, a large problem, and it’s a problem nationally,” says Mark Reinecke, chief of psychology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. A recent study, co-sponsored by the National Council for Behavioral Health and the Cohen Veterans Network, and conducted by research firm Ketchum Analytics, showed that 94 million Americans have had to wait longer than one week for mental health services.
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Simple facial exercises can speed the wrinkle-smoothing effects of botulinum toxin (Botox), according to researchers from Northwestern University in Chicago. “Patients often leave getting their Botox to the last minute,” lead researcher and professor of dermatology Dr. Murad Alam said in a university news release. “If people get their botulinum toxin right before a social engagement or important work event, they may worry it won’t start working in time,” he added. “Speeding up the effects could be important to people.”
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What they found was that not only did participants sleep much better in the room with overall darkness, they had much lower levels of insulin. This is a major finding, because insulin is the hormonal signal to the body to increase weight. The higher your insulin levels are, the more weight you gain, regardless of how much you eat or exercise. “Our preliminary findings show that a single night of light exposure during sleep acutely impacts measures of insulin resistance,” lead author Ivy Cheung Mason said in a statement. “Light exposure overnight during sleep has been shown to disrupt sleep, but these data indicate that it may also have the potential to influence metabolism.”
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Lurie Children’s Hospital and Northwestern Medicine are teaming up to try and address this. On Saturday at six different sites in northern Illinois and in the Chicago area, they’re offering safe places to get rid of extra prescription pills. The goal is to reduce the risk of addiction. Dr. Jonah Stulberg is one of the people leading that effort. He’s an assistant professor of surgery at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and he joined us on the line.
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Researchers at Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago noted that another aspect of aging in men is that a larger share of testosterone is converted to estrogen by a hormone called aromatase. In this study with mice, the investigators found that rising estrogen levels weaken the abdominal wall. They concluded this could lead to a hernia[…]”It may make sense to treat at-risk men with an aromatase inhibitor that could decrease estrogen and strengthen the muscle,” study leader Dr. Serdar Bulun said in a university news release.
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New research from Northwestern University shows animals know what time it is. Buzz60’s Sean Dowling has more. Buzz60
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A new study from Northwestern University revealed that animals can judge time. The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, is “one of the most convincing experiments” to show that animals understand time. “Does your dog know that it took you twice as long to get its food as it took yesterday? There wasn’t a good answer for that before,” study co-author Daniel Dombeck said in a press release. “This is one of the most convincing experiments to show that animals really do have an explicit representation of time in their brains when they are challenged to measure a time interval.”
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A 2017 paper by Northwestern University researchers Alex Song, Thomas Severini and Ravi Allada published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science examined travel by big league teams from 1992-2011. “We observed that jet-lag effects were largely evident after eastward travel with very limited effects after westward travel,” the authors wrote. “Jet lag impacted both home and away defensive performance. Remarkably, the vast majority of these effects for both home and away teams could be explained by a single measure, home runs allowed.”
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The videoconferencing program connects stroke patients with vascular neurologists at Northwestern Memorial so they can conduct examinations, interpret brain scan results and make treatment recommendations in consultation with Franciscan physicians, according to the statement. “This unique affiliation will offer enhanced care to residents in areas who may have limited access to leading specialists and cutting-edge clinical trials,” Dr. Maciej Lesniak, Michael J. Marchese professor of neurosurgery and chair of the department of neurological surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said in the statement.