Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is the most common cause of viral encephalitis. The brain lesions in HSV encephalitis (HSVE) primarily involve the temporal and frontal lobes. About half of patients develop seizures, which may progress to chronic seizure disorders or status epilepticus.

Gary P.H. Ho, MD, PhD, neurologist in the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dennis J. Selkoe, MD, co-director of the Center, and colleagues suspected there might be a functional link between Syt11 and αS in the context of Parkinson’s disease.

Key decision points in multiple sclerosis (MS) management would benefit from precision medicine—using information about an individual’s genomics, environment, and lifestyle, not just their signs and symptoms—to subtype their disease and make personalized decisions about their treatment.

Traumatic cerebrovascular injury (TCVI)—blunt or penetrating injury to the carotid arteries, vertebral arteries, venous structures or a combination—can be a serious sequela of traumatic brain injury. TCVI may be obscured by nearby neurological injury and go undetected for weeks or even years after the initial injury.

Joshua D. Bernstock, MD, PhD, G. Rees Cosgrove, MD, and colleagues described unsuccessful thalamotomy in a patient who displayed hyperostosis calvariae diffusa—expansion of the frontal endocranium in addition to the bones within the skull—as well as tricortical osseous anatomy.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital investigators helped lead a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled trial of unilateral MRgFUS thalamotomy performed with the Exablate 4000 system (InSightec).

Propranolol, the current standard of care for essential tremor (ET), has significant shortcomings in efficacy and safety. As medicinal chemist Kevin Hodgetts, PhD, explains, Brigham investigators are developing novel therapies for ET patients by applying innovative drug design concepts to validated disease targets.