Brain Scans Without the Tunnel

Transcript Generated by AI

Annoucement: 0:00

Welcome to the Med Evidence! Monday Minute Radio Show, hosted by Kevin Geddings of WSOS Radio and powered by ENCORE Research Group. Each Monday morning, Dr. Michael Koren calls us to bring you the latest medical update of the title discussion. MeDEvidence! is where we help you navigate the real truth behind medical research, both a clinical and research perspective. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn about the truth behind the data of medicine and healthcare. This is Med Evidence!

Keving Geddings: 0:45

Classic song from Joe Cocker. Unfortunately she wrote him a letter, Dr. Koren. Now I guess it would be a short text of 129 characters. It wouldn't be a letter.

Dr. Michael Koren: 0:45

That's right.

Keving Geddings: 0:46

You remember that song? Joe Cocker song?

Dr. Michael Koren: 0:49

I do.

Keving Geddings: 0:51

She Wrote me a Letter, yeah. Did you ever get a letter from a romantic interest? Like a long letter that was less than good?

Dr. Michael Koren: 0:56

That was less than good. Um if I did, I have suppressed that memory.

Keving Geddings: 1:03

Usually the letters were good, right? I mean, even in our day, the breakups were usually, or at least in my life, by phone, right? I mean, or it was in in person. It wasn't really a letter saying you're dumb. Well, I guess that's the old term Dear John letter, right?

Dr. Michael Koren: 1:17

Yeah. Well I'll I'll tell you one funny personal story about a breakup. Um when I was in school in Boston, I had a girlfriend who was living in in uh New York, in Great Neck, New York, and uh had a breakup with her and um went to her apartment in Great Neck and drove down from Boston. We're having this intense conversation and we're breaking up and then her roommate knocks on the door and says, I hate to disturb you, but Michael, I think your car is on fire in the parking lot.

Keving Geddings: 1:51

No way.

Dr. Michael Koren: 1:52

I swear to God. So I said, What? So of course I go out and there's the fire department there trying to put out a fire for my car in the parking lot. We we don't know exactly who set the car on fire, but uh yeah, this girl was um was pretty clever, so I guess uh she was getting revenge even before we officially broke up.

Keving Geddings: 2:12

That's a great story. That's like uh that's like sitcom material right there. Oh my gosh. Yeah, and it and she had a good plausible deniability because she was there with you, so you couldn't say, hey, this crazy girl set my car on fire because she was with you the whole time.

Dr. Michael Koren: 2:26

Exactly.

Keving Geddings: 2:27

That's brilliant. But uh well, Dr. Koren is with us, of course, medical doctor, cardiologist, uh research scientist, and we appreciate him taking time out of his day on Monday mornings to join us, always with some good information. Uh today we thought we would talk a little bit about uh a lot of us have had this fear of imaging and MRIs and these sorts of things where we have to get slid into this big noisy device, but there may be some change on the way, right, Dr. Koren?

Dr. Michael Koren: 2:50

Yeah, you you bring up an interesting um area where technology is developing very, very rapidly. If people had to go into big machines to get a CAT scan or an MRI or a PET scan, but that's changing fairly rapidly. And this past week a company approached us about helping them develop a PET scanner for the brain, more specifically looking for signs of Alzheimer's dementia, which can actually be attached to something that looks like a dentist chair. And you get into this little dentist chair, there's a uh an apparatus that goes around your head, and this can help us diagnose Alzheimer's disease. So we were brainstorming with this group that's actually out of Europe, talking about how we can develop them in clinical trials here in the United States. And so uh we'll see if that project gets up and going. But it speaks to the fact that in clinical research there's more and more opportunities for community patients, and there are more and more opportunities for community physicians to interface with technology groups all over the world to develop really the the most amazing things for our patients and things that move science forward. So that's a super exciting part of my job.

Keving Geddings: 3:58

Right.

Dr. Michael Koren: 3:58

And it also reminds us that um by sort of being connected to one of our research sites as a patient, you'll get insights into what's the latest and greatest in all these new technologies.

Keving Geddings: 4:09

Right. Yeah, indeed, as this moves forward and you get to hopefully have these clinical trials for this particular device, people would get to sit in this, you know, dental chair type device and perhaps learn what's going on, you know, inside their brains as it relates to dementia and other issues, right?

Dr. Michael Koren: 4:26

Yeah, absolutely. Now, just to be clear, we we don't have that in St. Augustine at the moment, uh, something that may or may not come, but uh we do do studies right now for Alzheimer's disease and we do do free memory testing for patients that are concerned about it. We also uh do evaluations for migraines and a lot of other things in the neurological space. And uh if you have a concern about headaches or you have a concern about your memory or have a loved one with concerns about that, please let us know and we'll check it out. And along the way, either we will get you involved in something that's going on here in Northeast Florida, or we'll show you where the the latest and greatest is happening, and in some cases uh the studies will actually pay for you to travel to wherever that technology is being shown. So um we're having a discussion with this group about whether or not we should have one of these newfangles uh scanners here in Florida or another part of the country. Uh but nonetheless, if you got involved in a study that used that scanner, there's a good chance that we can actually get you to that site for that technology.

Keving Geddings: 5:34

It's pretty amazing.

Dr. Michael Koren: 5:34

It's kind of interesting what we're doing.

Keving Geddings: 5:35

Yeah, no, that's really cool stuff. Dr. Michael Korenn, thank you again for your time this morning. Be safe out there, okay?

Dr. Michael Koren: 5:41

All right, you too.

Annoucement: 5:42

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