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Even though we sleep so much of our life, we don’t know exactly what goes on in our brain when we sleep. But genetic studies can point a clear path for further investigation into the role of sleep.

What’s new in research at Mass General? Here’s a snapshot of studies recently published in top-tier scientific journals: Effect of folic acid on child brain development Have you ever noticed that everything from cereal to pasta to pancake mix has folic acid listed as an ingredient?  This is due to a government-mandated folic acid fortificationRead more

Amanda Furness, PhD Amanda Furness, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her poster, Therapeutic insight into Mucolipidosis IV via in vitro glia models, recently won an award at Mass General’s Research Fellow Poster Celebration. We asked Dr. Furness about her research: What problem(s) are youRead more

Tarjinder Singh, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Mark Daly, PhD, in the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. His poster, The meta-analysis of rare coding variants in the whole-exome sequences of 25,000 cases and 50,000 controls implicates individual risk genes for schizophrenia, was among the winners at thisRead more

Florian Eichler, MD While it may not have been called rare disease research by name, Massachusetts General Hospital has been identifying and tracking rare diseases for more than a century, says Florian Eichler, MD, Director of the Center for Rare Neurological Diseases in the Department of Neurology. In recent years, advances made by the HumanRead more

It’s the night before a big meeting at work—or a race you’ve been training months for—and you want to do everything you can to get the next day off to a great start. How much sleep do you need to be at your best? Jacqueline Lane, PhD For years, the magic number for a goodRead more

Research from Saumya Das, MD, PhD, co-director of the Resynchronization and Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, focuses on studying irregular heartbeats (known as arrhythmias) in patients with heart failure, discovering new tests to better identify who is at risk for developing heart failure or arrhythmias, and uncovering new therapies to treat heart failure.

By studying genetic data from 55,000 individuals who are enrolled in four long-term research studies, we found that following a healthy lifestyle—defined as not smoking, exercising once a week, eating healthy and maintaining a body mass index of less than 30—can reduce your chances of having a heart attack by close to 50 percent.

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a fatal genetic disorder that causes the progressive breakdown of nerve cells in the brain.

A large scale analysis of genetic information from individuals with Tourette syndrome led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and UCLA has identified alterations in two genes that significantly increase the risk of developing the disorder.