Suresh Parmar (1st year MPhil Scholar) presented an in-depth seminar on Ion channels exploring the various types, conduction mechanisms, gene families, blockers etc. He managed to cover both breadth and depth in a well connected manner and the talk was appreciated.
Neethi Prem (1st year PhD Scholar) presented her seminar on : Neurogenesis in the Adult Brain: Implication for Treating Neuropsychiatric Disorders.
Neethi explained the current understanding of neurogenesis in the Sub Granular Zone of DG and the Sub Ventricular Zone of lateral ventricles as well as the impact of neurotherapeutics on neurogenesis. Currently there is no consensus if neurogenesis plays a causal role or is an after-effect in the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders through antidepressants or ECS. REFERENCES
Effects of Yoga Versus Walking on Mood, Anxiety, and Brain GABA Levels - Journal Club by Ravikiran2/7/2011
Dr. Ravikiran Kisan (3rd year PhD Scholar) presented the journal club on Effects of Yoga Versus Walking on Mood,
Anxiety, and Brain GABA Levels: A Randomized Controlled MRS Study by Streeter et al. published in THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE [Article Link] Reported Conclusions: The 12-week yoga intervention was associated with greater improvements in mood and anxiety than a metabolically matched walking exercise. This is the first study to demonstrate that increased thalamic GABA levels are associated with improved mood and decreased anxiety. The group discussed that the paper only presents benefits after one acute intervention but less than significant impact across the tonic 12 week intervention. The details of yoga postures used was not provided. Debasish (2nd year MPhil Scholar) presented a seminar on Developmental Brain Disorders.
He explored both prenatal and post natal developmental issues and touched upon developmental aspects that are experience-expectant (visual experiences, hearing experiences, language learning) and experience-dependent (unique to individual such as reading, singing etc). While he touched upon a variety of Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDDs), his main focus was on Autism spectrum disorders that occur in 1 in 1000 individuals with males being much more susceptible to it than females (4-5:1). About 75% of them have mental retardation and often exhibit restricted, repetitive, stereotyped behaviour. There was a good discussion about autistic savants, GABAergic behaviour being local vs global etc and one of the inputs was that even now the best therapy for autism continues to be behavioural and needs strong commitment from parents as well. |
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