Neuro Rehab, the UK's leading event for rehabilitation professionals, brings you the latest research findings from studies conducted around the world. These studies explore various pioneering treatments for patients affected by neurological conditions or injuries, and potential new ways of improving diagnosis and long-term outcomes.
Acquired brain injury: Study highlights benefits of music and speech and language therapy for children
Collaborative sessions combining music therapy with speech and language therapy can support meaningful communication gains in young children recovering from acquired brain injuries, according to new research.
The study, led by the University of Limerick’s (UL) Health Research Institute, explored how children aged between two and six responded to a joint music therapy and speech and language therapy programme, delivered during inpatient neurorehabilitation.
The children taking part in the study were recovering from complex neurological injuries and conditions including stroke, encephalitis, hypoxic brain injury, and Rasmussen’s encephalitis.
Across the programme, researchers observed children progressing from early pre-verbal engagement and simple vocalisations to word production, phrase completion, and more spontaneous communicative exchanges.
“One child initially joined in Old McDonald using only the final ‘o’ in ‘E-I-E-I-O’, but later progressed to independently singing phrases from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” said Dr James Burns, UL researcher and paediatric music therapist at the National Rehabilitation Hospital, Dublin.
“While these moments may appear small, they represented important steps towards using his voice more intentionally, initiating interaction, and participating more actively in everyday communication with others.”
Dr Burns said the research offers new evidence for how music can create structured, enjoyable opportunities for children with acquired communication impairments to re-engage with speech, sound, gesture, and interaction.
He added: “What was particularly striking was seeing how music created a space where interaction felt easier and more natural for children.
“Familiar songs and playful musical routines helped children vocalise, take turns, and connect more easily with the people around them.”
Researchers hope the findings will inform future paediatric neurorehabilitation practice and support the development of more robust tools for evaluating communication change in young children with acquired communication impairments.
Alzheimer's disease: Retinal photographs could help predict Alzheimer’s disease risk factors
A new study of tens of thousands of patients revealed that simple photographs of the retina at the back of the eye can accurately predict many of the most common risk factors that are associated with developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers at the University of Florida used machine learning to analyse retinal photographs, taken during routine checks for conditions such as glaucoma and cataracts, from more than 40,000 patients in a UK-based patient bank.
From this, they were able to identify regions of the retina associated with Alzheimer’s risk factors, such as the arteries and optical nerve.
“We know that Alzheimer’s disease develops over decades, but most of the diagnostic tools focus on late-stage pathology when it is too late to intervene,” said Ruogu Fang, a professor of biomedical engineering who led the new study.
“By looking at novel biomarkers, like retinal health, we offer new opportunities to identify patients at risk, offer appropriate tests and encourage them to develop healthy lifestyles to mitigate their risk.”
The research team said the AI model accurately predicted biological characteristics like sex or blood pressure, as well as lifestyle factors associated with developing Alzheimer’s, such as smoking, alcohol use and even insomnia.
While many of these factors are captured in patients’ medical charts, those records are often incomplete. Some, like alcohol and smoking, rely on unreliable self-reports.
“With the assistance of AI, we are now able to identify subtle retinal variations that were formerly overlooked across thousands of subjects, which may function as reliable indicators of future disease risk,” said Seowung Leem, a doctoral student at UF and first author of the study.
Researchers hope that by identifying early risk factors of Alzheimer's disease, patients could benefit from earlier interventions, including protective lifestyle changes and medications, before irreversible damage to the brain takes place.
Stroke: Artery widening, not blockages, linked to common stroke
Scientists have uncovered new evidence that challenges long-held assumptions about the causes of a common type of stroke, offering clues as to why widely used treatments may not work.
The study found that the build-up of fatty deposits in arteries does not appear to cause lacunar ischaemic stroke, which accounts for around a quarter of all ischaemic strokes – strokes caused by a blocked blood vessel – in the UK each year.
Instead, researchers identified enlargement and widening of arteries in the brain as being strongly linked to lacunar stroke.
Experts say the findings help explain why aspirin and other antiplatelet drugs, commonly used to prevent stroke, are not so effective in preventing lacunar ischaemic stroke.
The results are now helping to inform new treatment approaches, including the LACunar Intervention Trial 3 (LACI-3), which is testing drugs that directly target the brain’s small blood vessels.
Lacunar stroke is caused by damage to the brain’s smallest blood vessels and is a major contributor to disability, cognitive decline, dementia, and more strokes. However, its underlying causes have remained unclear, limiting progress in developing effective treatments.
To investigate this, researchers from the University of Edinburgh, the UK Dementia Research Institute, and collaborators studied 229 patients who had experienced either lacunar or mild non-lacunar stroke.
Participants underwent clinical and cognitive assessments, along with brain MRI scans at the time of their stroke and again one year later. These scans allowed researchers to track stroke type, signs of small vessel disease, and new areas of brain damage.
The study found that narrowing of large arteries was not linked to lacunar stroke or to small vessel disease. In contrast, patients with widening arteries were more than four times as likely to have lacunar stroke.
Arterial widening was also associated with a greater burden of small vessel disease, faster worsening of brain damage, and a higher risk of developing new ‘silent’ strokes – small areas of brain tissue damage caused by interrupted blood supply that can occur without obvious symptoms.
More than one in four participants developed these silent strokes during the study, despite receiving standard treatments to prevent further strokes.
Researchers say future treatments should target the underlying small vessel damage. Trials such as LACI-3 are now testing whether existing drugs, including cilostazol and isosorbide mononitrate, can protect the brain, reduce further strokes, and help prevent problems with memory, mobility and dementia after lacunar stroke.
Joanna Wardlaw, Professor of Applied Neuroimage at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Neuroscience and Cardiovascular Disease, said: “This study provides strong evidence that lacunar stroke is not caused by fatty blockage of larger arteries, but by disease of the small vessels within the brain itself.
“Recognising this distinction is crucial, because it explains why conventional treatments like antiplatelet drugs are not as effective for this type of stroke and highlights the urgent need to develop new therapies that target the underlying microvascular damage.”
MND: New drug could turn MND from terminal to chronic illness
Researchers at the University of Queensland say they have unlocked a breakthrough which could transform motor neuron disease (MND) from an acute terminal illness into a manageable chronic condition.
Working in partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology, The University of Tokyo and Sungkyunkwan University, the team has developed a drug, called R8Y, that activates a hard-to-target receptor found on the surface of many immune cells called C5aR2.
Professor Trent Woodruff, from the university’s School of Biomedical Sciences, said the new drug provides a unique tool to study C5aR2 in detail, opening new possibilities for anti-inflammatory therapies.
“With this knowledge, it’s possible we could have an anti-inflammatory drug treatment for testing in MND patients within five years, possibly turning the disease into a long-term chronic condition rather than an acute terminal illness,’’ Professor Woodruff said.
The R8Y drug is a molecule designed to bind specifically to C5aR2.
This allowed researchers to see the structure and function of the receptor, which led to the discovery that C5aR2 does not behave like most other receptors.
“It is unable to couple to G proteins — a rare and important distinction which explains why it’s been so difficult to target and why its role in inflammation has been so elusive,” said Professor Woodruff.
“Using the drug we created, our international partners created a model of the drug bound to the receptor, giving us vital information around how the drug binds to the receptor and how the receptor signals.”
Using this knowledge, the UQ team is now working to develop anti-inflammatory drugs for hard-to-treat neurodegenerative diseases like MND, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.