NEUROSCIENCE: Watchful Waking

Watchful Waiting

Waking up to narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy with cataplexy, certainly one of the most fascinating problems in medicine, always seemed (to us) an unlikely candidate for an autoimmune or infectious etiology. In typical cases, the CSF is bland and MRI unrevealing. Powerful evidence (summarized in reference 1) that abnormalities of the hypocretin system contribute to narcolepsy came initially from genetic studies revealing that ca...

Dreaming and Waking Cognition

Dreams are often believed to be “symbolic” and thus categorically distinct from the “ordinary” thoughts of waking cognition. But to the contrary, emerging evidence suggests that dreams and waking cognition share a common origin at the neurobiological level, which is reflected in similarity of form, content, and function at the phenomenological level. In both dreams and daydreams, memories of th...

Waking the sleeping beauty.

Artemisinin derivatives are essential for the treatment of Plasmodium falciparum malaria throughout the world. Given orally, artesunate and artemether—the 2 main compounds—are rapidly absorbed and metabolized to dihydroartemisinin (DHA), the metabolite responsible for the majority of the parasitocidal activity. The precise mechanism of action is still debated , but the main properties of this c...

Watchful waiting for small renal masses.

Small renal masses (SRMs; < 4 cm in diameter) account for most renal tumors treated today. Incidental early detection of SRMs by abdominal imaging results in favorable grade and stage migration to renal cell carcinoma, and also increases detection of benign renal tumors. As a result, most SRMs manifest indolent biological behavior with excellent prognosis. Despite the increased use of minimally...