Brain Development, Drugs and Disease Edexcel A

If 100 women take a valproate medicine during pregnancy about 10 of their babies will be born with physical birth abnormalities. And about 30 to 40 of the 100 children will go on to have disorders affecting their learning and thinking abilities, including autism. All doses of valproate carry a risk but the data support that the higher the dose of valproate, the higher the risks of birth abnormalities and effects on the child’s brain development. Two smaller epidemiological studies (Hunt et al 2008 and Wade, 2015) did not show an increased relative risk of small for gestational age but these studies may not have been adequately powered to detect an increase in risk.

Psychology Memory Unit – PowerPoints, Guided Notes, Worksheets, Kahoot, Test, & Google Slides/Apps

The increased malformations observed in mice occurred at plasma concentrations relevant to the human therapeutic dose. Therefore, based on the currently available non-clinical data the risk of a teratogenic effect following therapeutic use in humans cannot be excluded. Based on the pooled data from this study the prevalence of major malformations (any type) for children exposed to zonisamide was calculated to be 0.28% (95% CI 0.25–2.39) in the meta-analysis by Weston et al 2016. The preliminary conclusion from review of emerging unpublished clinical data is that there was no evidence of an increased risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities in pregabalin-exposed children. The cerebrumiq findings from clinical studies with regards to the risk of fetal death in association with in-utero exposure to oxcarbazepine are inconsistent.

A drug used to treat epilepsy, mainly by controlling or managing the occurrence of seizures in a patient with epilepsy. An absence seizure, which used to be called a “petit mal” seizure, is where the person loses awareness of their surroundings for a short time. Pregabalin (brand name Lyrica) is indicated as adjunctive therapy in adults with partial seizures with or without secondary generalisation. It is also indicated in adults for the treatment of peripheral and central neuropathic pain and the treatment of generalised anxiety disorder (GAD).

Connectivity of Brain Regions Matters More Than Once Thought

The left side of the brain specialises in logical, linear, analytical processes and the right side specialises in intuitive, holistic, imaginative processes (gross simplification). The real power of the brain to tackle a task is unleashed when left and right brains work together simultaneously and synergistically. Today we have several generations of adults with low ability in these important skills which is a major problem. If parents, teachers and politicians worked on these intelligences within themselves, then these skills would diffuse to our children. Fortunately those of us interested in positive health (and consequently reading this magazine) are learning the wisdom of the ancient ones and the ancient traditions of the East and North America.

• At that time, similar reviews had not recently been done for the other epilepsy medicines.
• Although the risk was statistically significantly increased compared to the untreated control group, there was no difference compared with a levetiracetam exposed group and the available data for the latter does not appear to support an increased risk of fetal loss.
• During the critical period, synapses that receive visual stimulation and pass on action potentials into the visual cortex are retained and strengthened.
• For perampanel, primidone and vigabatrin there are data on less than 300 exposed pregnancies and for brivaracetam, eslicarbazepine, ethosuximide, lacosamide, rufinamide, and tiagabine there are data on less than 100 exposed pregnancies.

Mental Health ConditionsIt is not surprising that a condition like CVI that can affect social relationships, learning, behaviour and development, can lead to mental health conditions, and we know many people with CVI who have been affected by Depression. Understanding how impaired vision has caused difficulties can be very empowering, and a pathway to help and recovery can be developed, matching strategies to the known difficulties CVI creates. Complex Needs / Complex Additional Support NeedsComplex needs typically refers to a mix of medical needs and developmental difficulties. Sometimes this term is just used to mean developmental delays where there are many (and so, complex) causes. Without a list of the individual needs and difficulties, this term has extremely limited value.See Developmental Delay, below. Visual spatial skills are the ability to process visual stimuli to comprehend spatial relationships between objects and to visualize different scenarios or images.

Depending on a mix of genetic predisposition and early learning opportunity we may develop a preference for a particular learning style and people who feel that they only learn by “doing” are likely to have a preference for “kinesthetic” techniques, and would not learn easily with traditional school “chalk and talk” teaching methods. However, the literature tends to extrapolate from this the need for teachers to teach to the learning preference of each pupil and for the learner themselves to develop and emphasise their preferred style. Though this makes sense for enhancing learning in the short term, in the longer term in order to develop life-long learning and brain fitness, we should use this information about learning styles to ensure that we continually improve all our visual, auditory and kinesthetic skills. We need our teachers to take an holistic approach and always use a mix of V. A. K.

The largest data set from the North American Antiepileptic Drug Pregnancy Registry (Hernández-Díaz et al, 2014 and 2017) showed an increased risk of being small for gestational age and effects on birth weight and birth length. Patorno et al., 2017 conducted a cohort study nested in the US Medicaid Analytic eXtract (MAX) providing data on 477 pregnancies exposed to pregabalin in the first trimester and compared these to pregnancies of women not exposed to antiepileptics. The crude data suggested an increased risk of major congenital malformations (RR 1.80, 95% CI 1.26–2.58), which this was no longer statistically significant after the analyses were adjusted to take into account factors including age, race, comorbidities, and other medication. The larger clinical studies are those from the North American Antiepileptic Drug pregnancy registry (Hernandez-Diaz 2012, NAAED, 2019), the Swedish National Birth Registry (Kallen et al 2013) and a study using prospective data from teratology information services (Fujii et al 2013). None of these studies are suggestive of an increased risk of congenital malformations in association with use of gabapentin during pregnancy. However, the numbers exposed in each of these studies and the total overall numbers of exposed pregnancies (around 600 first trimester exposed pregnancies) remains relatively low and do not allow robust conclusions to be drawn.