Neurological Head Research Articles

Maria Rodríguez-Oroz: leading the research to prevent cognitive decline in Parkinson's disease

As a little girl, Maria Rodríguez-Oroz was captivated by the apparent magical abilities of the paediatrician she was taken to whenever she was ill. “He always knew how to make me feel better”, Rodríguez-Oroz tells The Lancet Neurology. “Ever since then, I wanted to be a doctor too.” Luckily, she fulfilled that aspiration, and is now head of neurology and neurosciences at the University Clinic of Navarra and professor of neurology at CIMA Universidad de Navarra, in Pamplona, Spain.

A tribute to some of the doctors who died from COVID-19

A tribute to some of the doctors who died from COVID-19

How to…

Steven De Decker, Head of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the Royal Veterinary College and BVNS President, helps us logically assess the dog with hindlimb paralysis.

Newer drugs keep multiple sclerosis patients out of wheelchairs – expert

There are fewer multiple sclerosis patients in wheelchairs than ever before in South Africa, mainly due to the advent of interferon drugs over the last decade with better second line drugs over the past three years, says Prof. Girish Modi, Head of Neurology at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Roy Laver Swank, MD, PhD (1909–2008)

Dr. Roy Laver Swank, first Head of Neurology at what is now Oregon Health & Science University, died November 16, 2008, in Portland, at age 99. Dr. Swank was best known for his advocacy of a low-fat diet for multiple sclerosis (MS), but his career encompassed much more. Between 1934 and 2003, he published over 170 scholarly works. His varied research included studies on a stain for myelin undergoing degeneration (the Swank-Davenport stain), thiamine deficiency, chronic combat exhaustion, prevention of microemboli following cardiac bypass surgery, effects of fat on blood viscosity, and diet in the treatment of MS. Dr. Swank was born in Camas, Washington. He graduated from the University of Washington …

The challenge of logotherapy

"Every age has its own neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it." In these words Viktor Frankl strikes the keynote of the new therapy that he brings to the neurotic condition of our time. Dr. Frankl is head of neurol ogy in the Vienna Poliklinic and Professor in the Medical Faculty, University of Vienna. His diagnosis of our age is that many today suffer a loss of the meaning of life. Such a loss results in a profound emptiness and futility, which he calls the "existential vacuum."1 How shall we cope with this loss of meaning, which robs life of its value and purpose? First of all, the remedy must be appropriate to the need. And this is where many remedies fail. One remedy today that is often applied and applauded is psychoanal ysis. Whenever a person is unhappy or perplexed he may be referred to psychoanal ysis. But psychoanalysis is a specific treatment for specific neuroses and not a cure all for every condition. And it is open to misunderstandings that often lead to fallacies, such as the pathetic fallacy that reduces every distress to illness to be treated as a pathology. But loss of meaning is a spiritual problem to be met on its own ground, not to be pushed to the couch or regressed to infantile neuroses. Psychoanalysis has emerged from important discoveries of Freud about the dy namic nature of the unconscious. They are historical, and they are dated. We build on the foundation of the past, even as we are obliged to move beyond it and correct its errors. Freud was a child of nineteenth-century science cast in lines of rigid determinism. This rigid determinism is what the newer science of our time has