Music and the brain: disorders of musical listening

The study of the brain bases for normal musical listening has advanced greatly in the last 30 years. The evidence from basic and clinical neuroscience suggests that listening to music involves many cognitive components with distinct brain substrates. Using patient cases reported in the literature, we develop an approach for understanding disordered musical listening that is based on the systematic assessment of the perceptual and cognitive analysis of music and its emotional effect. This approach can be applied both to acquired and congenital deficits of musical listening, and to aberrant listening in patients with musical hallucinations. Both the bases for normal musical listening and the clinical assessment of disorders now have a solid grounding in systems neuroscience

Surface Plasmon Resonance Analysis for the Screening of Anti-prion Compounds

The interaction of anti-prion compounds and amyloid binding dyes with a carboxy-terminal domain of prion protein (PrP121?231) was examined using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and compared with inhibition activities of abnormal PrP formation in scrapie-infected cells. Most examined compounds had affinities for PrP121?231: antimalarials had low affinities, whereas Congo red, phthalocyanine and thioflavin S had high affinities. The SPR binding response correlated with the inhibition activity of abnormal PrP formation. Several drugs were screened using SPR to verify the findings: propranolol was identified as a new anti-prion compound. This fact indicates that drug screenings by this assay are useful