Nancy Andreasen, MD
USA Today
How does the human brain create an evocative haiku, a beautiful painting, a sculpture or even a delicious new dinner? UI neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen, MD, tackles that question and more in a new paperback book written for a general audience: The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius. Andreasen, a psychiatrist who started her career with a PhD not in neuroscience but in Renaissance literature, addressed several questions in an interview that touched on the link between genius and madness and which part of the brain kicks in during the creative process.

Geri Hall, PhD, ARNP, FAAN
Honolulu Star Bulletin
Uninhibited spending and loss of judgment are typical components of the degenerative brain disease called Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) that attacks slowly and yields devastating results, often stripping patients of language skills and inciting behavior so bizarre that they're frequently misdiagnosed. Experts regard FTD as the second most prevalent cause of dementia in patients under 65. The disease strikes otherwise healthy individuals in their 40s, 50s and early 60s, often at the peak of their career and while they are raising children. In addition, symptoms may vary enough that casual acquaintances and workmates underestimate the severity of the illness. But that's not true for those who live with the patient. "With FTD, we see families in major crisis," said Hall, an Advanced Practice Nurse who has worked with hundreds of FTD patients in the Neurology Clinic at UI Hospitals and Clinics and elsewhere. "The problem is that the patient has not been determined to be incompetent, and nobody wants to take away the autonomy of someone who is not impaired. So the caregiver is constantly being barraged by negative restrictive feedback that he is trying to limit this competent person. It's like treading endlessly in a swimming pool."

Edwin Stone, MD
Baltimore Sun
A story about personalized medicine, a form of medicine in which tests and drugs are developed for individuals, says the idea may never take hold because the markets are too small for companies to make money. It points out Edwin Stone, MD, a University of Iowa neuroscientist. For more than a decade, Stone and his UI colleagues have characterized genetic abnormalities associated with eye diseases. "We'd do our research, write the results, and publish in medical journals," Stone says. "Once we published, we figured our job was done. Someone else would develop tests and market them to physicians." But that never happened, and it took a while for economic reality to dawn. "The diseases we study are too rare," Stone says. "There's no money to be made because the market is just too small."