Glossary
Anti-convulsant
A group of drugs used to treat rapid and excessive firing of neurones that cause muscle spasms and seizures.
Antipsychotics
Also called a neuroleptics are used to manage psychosis. Examples include chlozapine and resperidone. Antipsychotcis can be typical or atypical. The...
Apoptosis
The process of programmed cell death involving many processes ending in the controlled death of the cell in question. This process involves the ...
Basal Ganglia
A group of nuclei at the base of the forebrain which function together and are believed to play a role in voluntary motor control and procedural...
BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor)
A growth factor found prodominantly in the brain and peripheral nervous system where it supports the survival of existing neurons and the growth ...
CAG repeats
The repeated sequence of CAG (Cysteine, Adenine, Guanine) in the gene encoding for, in this case, the huntingtin protein. A number of repeats is...
Chorea
Involuntary, brief and irregular contractions of limbs. Does not show rhythm or repetition but can seem to flow from muscle to muscle and has been...
CT scan
A CT (computerised tomography) scanner is a specialised type of x-ray. Several beams of x-rays are sent simultaneously from different angles.
Beams...
Dementia
A serious loss of cognitive ability in which a subject may show loss of memory along with a loss of patterns of thought.
Dominant mutation
This is a mutation which, when the affect organism is heterozygous with the wild-type form of the gene, will still ellicit the effect which the ...