Updates and Corrections: The Brain Facts Book (Eighth Edition, 2018)

As time passes, neuroscientists discover new information about the brain and central nervous system.

To keep up with new knowledge, BrainFacts developed the Brain Primers library – chapters from the Brain Facts book (Eighth Edition, 2018), with corrections, updated context, and new information.

A consolidated list of new and notable updates and corrections is found below:

UPDATES

Chapter 5: Thinking, Planning & Language

Brain Facts Book Location: page 39, Constructing Representations

Book Text: “Experts have learned from people like D.B.O. that damage to certain areas of the temporal lobes leads to problems with recognizing and identifying visual stimuli. This condition, called agnosia, occurs in several forms, depending on the exact location of the brain damage.”

Updated Text: “For example, damage to certain areas of the temporal lobes leads to problems with recognizing and identifying visual stimuli. This condition, called agnosia, occurs in several forms and can impact one or more of our senses, depending on the exact location of the brain damage."

Rationale: The update emphasizes how agnosia can affect one or more senses depending on the brain network damaged.

Online Brain Primer: Deriving Meaning from Specialized and Organized Brain Regions

Chapter 11: Childhood Disorders

Brain Facts Book Location: page 71, Autism Spectrum Disorders

Book Text: “Currently, 1 of every 68 American 8-year-olds is estimated to meet the diagnostic criteria for an autism spectrum disorder.”

Updated Text: “Currently, 1 of every 44 8-year-olds in the U.S. is estimated to meet the diagnostic criteria for an autism spectrum disorder.”

Rationale: The prevalence data for autism spectrum disorder was updated to reflect the most recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data available at the time of this update.

Online Brain Primer: Insights Into Autism

Brain Facts Book Location: page 73, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Book Text: “In 2014, approximately 11 percent of American parents with a child between the ages of 4 and 17 reported that their son or daughter had received an ADHD diagnosis.In at least 30 percent of those diagnosed with ADHD, the disorder continues into adulthood.”

Updated Text: “From 2016-2019, approximately 10% of children in the U.S. between the ages of 3 and 17 had received an ADHD diagnosis at some point in their lives. The disorder continues into adulthood for at least around 30% of those diagnosed with ADHD, although this estimate may vary.”

Rationale: The prevalence data for ADHD was updated to reflect the most recent CDC data available at the time of this update.

Online Brain Primer: Understanding ADHD

Brain Facts Book Location: page 73, Down Syndrome

Book Text: “Currently, about 250,000 people in the United States are living with Down syndrome.”

Updated Text: “Around 6,000 babies are born each year with Down syndrome in the United States, with the condition occurring in about one in every 700 births.”

Rationale: The prevalence data for Down syndrome was updated to reflect the most recent CDC data available at the time of this update.

Online Brain Primer: Understanding Down Syndrome

Chapter 12: Psychiatric Disorders

Brain Facts Book Location: page 77, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Book Text: “OCD is a common, chronic condition aptly named for its symptoms: uncontrollable, recurring thoughts (obsessions) and repeated, ritualistic behaviors (compulsions) to banish, relieve, or compensate for the obsessions."

Updated Text: "For some individuals, these anxious thoughts can be uncontrollable, recurring, and prolonged — leading people to try mitigating their obsessions through compulsive, repetitive behaviors or mental rituals that can lead to significant disruptions in their daily lives. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common condition aptly named for its symptoms: uncontrollable, recurring thoughts (obsessions), and ritualistic behaviors or thoughts (compulsions) to banish, relieve, or compensate for these obsessions."

Rationale: The book defines compulsions only as visible behaviors, while the webpage adds mental compulsions to the definition. The online version also adds that OCD can lead to daily-life disruptions.

Online Brain Primer: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: An Overview

Brain Facts Book Location: page 77, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Book Text: “Another type of OCD is hoarding, provoked by the fear of losing or forgetting important information after discarding something.”

Updated Text: The online Brain Primer omits hoarding in the section on OCD.

Rationale: According to the 2022 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), hoarding disorder is now considered a distinct, isolated condition on the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Online Brain Primer: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: An Overview

Brain Facts Book Location: page 77, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Book Text: “About 70 percent of people with OCD obtain limited relief with medication, primarily SSRIs, but at higher doses than are used for depression therapy. ... Cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of counseling, can also be useful.”

Updated Text: “About 70% of people undergoing cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of counseling, improve significantly without medications. A common form of CBT used for OCD is exposure and response prevention (ERP) … CBT can be very useful and even normalize function in brain areas implicated in OCD-related dysfunction.”

Rationale: The online text now emphasizes cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a more common method to improve OCD symptoms and includes information on exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy.

Online Brain Primer: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: An Overview

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 78-79, Major Depression

Book Section: Major Depression

Update: The updated online page incorporates the latest available DSM criteria for depression diagnosis, prevalence data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and risk factors. It also adds qualifying context to information regarding treatments for depression.

Online Brain Primer: Depression: An Overview

Brain Facts Book Location: page 80, Schizophrenia

Book Text: “Like many psychiatric disorders that first emerge when the human brain matures in the late teens and early 20s, schizophrenia usually appears between ages 15 and 25. This time period corresponds to development of the brain’s prefrontal cortex."

Updated Text: "Like many psychiatric disorders that first emerge when the human brain matures in the late teens and early 20s, schizophrenia usually appears *between late teens to early 20s in males and early 20s to early 30s in females."

Rationale: The age ranges for typical schizophrenia onset were updated to reflect NIMH consensus.

Online Brain Primer: Schizophrenia: An Overview

Chapter 13: Addiction

Brain Facts Book Location: page 82, Opioids: Treatment

Book Text: "Naloxone can also be used in prevention, to limit cravings in people highly motivated to quit."

Updated Text: The online Brain Primer omits this sentence suggesting naloxone can be used to prevent opioid use disorder.

Rationale: Naloxone is an emergency medication used to reverse overdose. It cannot be used as a preventative medicine to limit opioid cravings.

Online Brain Primer: The Effects of Opioids

Brain Facts Book Location: page 84, Nicotine: Treatment

Added Text: "Bupropion, originally approved by the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] as an antidepressant, is also sometimes used to help nicotine cessation. Bupropion works by both stimulating the release of and inhibiting the reuptake of norepinephrine and dopamine."

Rationale: Bupropion is another possible treatment option to help people stop using nicotine.

Online Brain Primer: The Brain and Nicotine

Chapter 14: Injury & Illness

Brain Facts Book Location: page 88, Brain Tumors

Book Text: “Each year, more than 79,000 people in the United States are likely to be diagnosed with a tumor that originates in their brain — a primary brain tumor. An estimated 26,000 of these tumors will be malignant (cancerous), and 53,000 will be benign (noncancerous).

Updated Text: “Each year, more than 94,000 people in the United States are likely to be diagnosed with a tumor that originates in their brain — a primary brain tumor. An estimated 27,000 of these tumors will be malignant (cancerous), and 67,000 will be benign (noncancerous).”

Rationale: The prevalence data for brain tumors was updated to reflect newer records from the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States (CBTRUS).

Online Brain Primer: Understanding and Treating Brain Tumors

Brain Facts Book Location: page 90, Neurological Trauma (Traumatic Brain Injury)

Book Text: “In the United States, an estimated 1.7 million people sustain traumatic brain injuries (TBI) each year. Of those, 275,000 are hospitalized, and about 52,000 will die as a result of TBI. Falls are the leading cause of all traumatic brain injury, and motor vehicle/traffic injury is the leading cause of TBI-related death. The direct medical costs and indirect costs of TBI, such as lost productivity, are estimated to be more than $60 billion a year in the United States.”

Updated Text: “In 2019, an estimated 223,000 people in the United States were hospitalized with traumatic brain injuries. CDC estimates report over 69,000 cases of TBI-related deaths in the U.S. in 2021 — around 190 TBI-related deaths every day. Falls are the leading cause of all traumatic brain injury, and firearm-related suicide is the leading cause of TBI-related death in the U.S. The direct medical costs and indirect costs of TBI, such as lost productivity, are estimated to be around $76.5 billion (in 2010 dollars) in the United States.”

Rationale: The prevalence data, leading cause of TBI-related death in the U.S., and estimated cost of illness for TBIs were updated to reflect the most recent CDC data available at the time of this update.

Online Brain Primer: Snapshots into Traumatic Brain Injury

Brain Facts Book Location: page 90, Neurological Trauma: Traumatic Brain Injury

Updated Text: “Scientists have discovered that neurogenesis, the production and growth of new nerve cells, can occur in certain regions of the adult brain. … Ongoing research aims to figure out how certain neurochemical and cellular barriers that prevent regrowth and repair can be overcome and how the newly born cells can be induced to integrate into the injured circuit.”

Rationale: This additional paragraph showcases how scientists are studying cellular growth and repair for TBI treatments.

Online Brain Primer: Snapshots into Traumatic Brain Injury

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 91, Neurological Trauma: Spinal Cord Injury

Book Section: Spinal Cord Injury

Update: The online page incorporates a clearer definition of spinal cord injury (SCI), information on how SCIs occur, an image showing how SCIs cause damage along the spinal cord, and updated information on SCI treatments and therapies.

Online Brain Primer: Snapshots into Traumatic Brain Injury

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 91-92, Neurological Acquired Immune Deficience Syndrome

Book Section: Neurological Acquired Immune Deficience Syndrome. (“Deficience” is an obsolete spelling. The text should read “Deficiency” in the title.)

Update: The online page incorporates a reframing of focus from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), updated information on HIV incidence, prevalence, and treatment from Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), and updated information on HIVs mechanism of infection and neurocognitive disorders associated with the infection.

Online Brain Primer: The Neurological Impacts of HIV

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 92-93, Multiple Sclerosis

Book Section: Multiple Sclerosis

Update: The online page incorporates multiple sclerosis (MS) global prevalence statistics from 2022 Atlas of MS data, additional information on viral risk factors for disease, and one disease course classification addition to the different types of MS.

Online Brain Primer: Multiple Sclerosis: When the Immune System Attacks the Nervous System

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 93-95, Chronic Pain

Book Section: Chronic Pain

Update: The online page emphasizes chronic pain rather than general pain, plus includes U.S. prevalence statistics for chronic pain, information on different types of pain, major updates on pain treatment options in the “Treating Pain” section, and other updates on non-drug treatments for reducing pain.

Online Brain Primer: Living with Chronic Pain

Brain Facts Book Location: page 95, Stroke

Book Section: Stroke

Update: The online page incorporates updated estimated cost of illness of strokes in the U.S., updated risk factor and prevention information for strokes, additional information on different types of strokes, stroke emergency response information, updates to treatment options following a stroke, and updates to potential long-term outcomes following a stroke.

Online Brain Primer: Suffering and Recovering from a Stroke

Chapter 15: Neurodegenerative Diseases

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 96-100, Alzheimer’s Disease

Book Section: Alzheimer’s Disease

Update: The online page incorporates updated information on Alzheimer’s disease onset, mortality rate, diagnostic biomarkers, and treatments.

Online Brain Primer: Grasping Alzheimer's Disease

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 103-104, Huntington’s Disease

Book Section: Huntington’s Disease

Update: The online page incorporates updated information on Huntington’s disease symptoms, onset, and treatments.

Online Brain Primer: Illuminating Huntington’s Disease

Chapter 16: Kinds of Research

Update: A new Brain Primer not featured as a chapter in the book was published online covering how computational neuroscience techniques and tools, like artificial intelligence (AI), are used in the neuroscience field.

BONUS Online Brain Primer: Modeling the Mind: Electric Neurons to Artificial Intelligence

Chapter 17: Solving Human Problems

Brain Facts Book Location: page 114, Psychoactive Therapies: Transcranial Stimulation

Book Section: Psychoactive Therapies: Transcranial Stimulation

Update: The updated online page was sectioned off from the “Psychoactive Therapies” chapter section, and it includes new information about the use of transcranial stimulation for certain disorders and conditions.

Online Brain Primer: Activating Brain Circuits with Transcranial Stimulation

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 114-116, Psychoactive Therapies: New Types of Drugs

Book Section: Psychoactive Therapies: New Types of Drugs

Update: The “New Types of Drugs” section in the “Psychoactive Therapies” section of Chapter 17 was not published as an online Brain Primer. Newer treatments and techniques were updated across online Brain Primers library.

Online Brain Primer: N/A

Brain Facts Book Location: page 116, Predictive Neuroimaging and Personalized Medicine + Cellular Markers

Book Sections: Predictive Neuroimaging and Personalized Medicine + Cellular Markers

Update: These two sections of the book were combined under one online Brain Primer. The book’s “Cellular Markers” chapter is available under “Molecular Biomarkers” as an online Brain Primer; meanwhile, the “Predictive Neuroimaging and Personalized Medicine” chapter is updated under “Neuroimaging Biomarkers” online.

Online Brain Primer: Personalizing Treatments with Molecular Biomarkers and Neuroimaging

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 116-117, Cell Transplant

Book Section: Cell Transplant

Update: The updated online page incorporates additional information on various types of stem cells, how stems cells are used in neuroscience research, ethical discussions surrounding embryonic stem cells, and FDA-approved treatments using stem cells.

Online Brain Primer: Cell Transplantation Using Stem Cells

Brain Facts Book Location: page 117, Gene Replacement

Book Section: Gene Replacement

Update: The updated online page incorporates a reframing of “gene replacement” to “gene therapy,” more firm definitions surrounding gene therapy and its use, and the addition of a case illustrating ethical considerations for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) gene therapy use on cells producing eggs or sperm.

Online Brain Primer: Modifying Genes as a Form of Therapy

Chapter 18: Neuroscience in Society

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 119-120, Neurolaw

Book Section: Neurolaw

Update: The updated online page includes quotes from an interview with Francis Shen, an expert at the intersection of law and neuroscience.

Online Brain Primer: Neuroscience Takes the Stand

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 120-121, Neuroeconomics

Book Section: Neuroeconomics

Update: The updated online page includes quotes from an interview with Scott Huettel, an expert at the intersection of decision science and neuroeconomics.

Online Brain Primer: Neuroeconomics: Making Big and Small Decisions

Brain Facts Book Location: page 121, Ethics and the Future of Neuroscience

Book Section: Ethics and the Future of Neuroscience

Update: The updated online page includes quotes from an interview with James Giordano, an expert at the intersection of ethics and neuroscience.

Online Brain Primer: Neuroethics Asks the Difficult Questions

CORRECTIONS

Chapter 4: Learning, Memory & Emotions

Brain Facts Book Location: page 34, Declarative Memory

Book Text: “In contrast, working memory is a temporary type of declarative memory, a form of short-term memory that lets you hold a phone number, a sum, a visual image, or other data point needed in the present and immediate future.”

Corrected Text: “Working memory is a form of short-term memory that lets you hold a piece of information, like a phone number, in mind for a short period of time.”

Rationale: Working memory is not a type of declarative memory. Rather, it is a form of short-term memory naturally lasting around 10 to 30 seconds, unless a person actively repeats or focuses on the information. “Working Memory” has its own subsection in the online Brain Primer.

Online Brain Primer: Making Memories: Working Memory

Chapter 10: The Body in Balance

Brain Facts Book Location: page 69, Stress

Book Text: “At the same time, the autonomic system’s parasympathetic branch restricts blood flow to other organs including the skin, gonads, digestive tract, and kidneys.”

Corrected Text: “At the same time, the autonomic system’s sympathetic branch restricts blood flow to other organs including the skin, gonads, digestive tract, and kidneys.”

Rationale: The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system redirects blood and energy during fight-or-flight. The parasympathetic branch generally supports rest and digestion.

Online Brain Primer: How Stress Impacts the Brain and Body: The Stress Response

Chapter 14: Injury & Illness

Brain Facts Book Location: pages 91-92, Neurological Acquired Immune Deficience Syndrome

Book Section Title: “Neurological Acquired Immune Deficience Syndrome”

Corrected Text: Any references of “deficience” in the book text have been updated to “deficiency” when referring to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The online page incorporates a reframing of primary focus from AIDS to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Rationale: “Deficience” is an obsolete spelling. The text should read “Deficiency” in the title.

Online Brain Primer: The Neurological Impacts of HIV