Technion discovers how to reduce cognitive damages of brain diseases

Author: Sarah Chemla, The Jerusalem Post

Published On: 09/04/2020

In a groundbreaking discovery, researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in partnership with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC), found out how to rescue functional and structural connectivity, and reduce cognitive impairments of brain diseases with drug treatment.

The researchers, Prof. Itamar Kahn of the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine in Israel and Prof. Nancy Ratner of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC), claimed that such a breakthrough demonstrates a potential new treatment for cognitive damages in the brain white matter, the areas of the central nervous system. 

The brain white matter, contains millions of nerve fibers, or axons, that connect other parts of the brain and spinal cord and signal your nerves to talk to one another. A fatty material called myelin protects the fibers and gives white matter its color. 

The pioneering research, “Brain-wide structural and functional disruption in mice with oligodendrocyte-specific Nf1 deletion is rescued by inhibition of nitric oxide synthase,” was published in the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, PNAS. Technion MD/PhD candidate Jad Asleh and Tel Aviv Medical Center neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Shofty were co-lead authors.

Read the full article here.