DANDY Neurosurgical Club Armenia

Join the future of neurology with Dandy Armenia Neurological Society 🧠✨
Applications for new members are now open!
Be part of a community passionate about neuroscience, learning, research, and collaboration.

⏳ Application deadline: Monday (18.05.2026) at 23:59

Apply now and grow with us 🤍

This week on NeuroReflections, we delve into the 2026 biopic Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua.

More than just a musical journey, the film provides a visceral look into the neurological and psychiatric complexities of an icon shaped by brilliance and profound trauma.

The film explores how early childhood toxic stress and physical injury can fundamentally rewire the brain, leading to a lifelong struggle with self-perception and emotional regulation.

Michael’s story reminds us that while pain can scar the body and brain, the human spirit can reorganize trauma into a visionary legacy.

We’d love to hear from you!! Drop your thoughts on the film’s portrayal of these disorders and let us know what you want us to dive into next Friday🎬🍿

This week on NeuroReflections, we explore Alias Grace, a historical drama following a young servant accused of murder who claims memory loss, as a psychiatrist investigates her past and questions her guilt.

The story reflects trauma-related dissociation, memory fragmentation, and suggestibility, raising questions about identity formation and whether her symptoms align with dissociative identity disorder or represent psychological coping mechanisms shaped by stress and environment.

Ultimately, the narrative leaves truth ambiguous, emphasizing complexity of mind.

Vision begins in the eye, but it is completed in the brain.

What we perceive as reality is a reconstruction shaped by prediction, memory, and neural integration.Neurological disorders do not just impair vision, they reveal how fragile and interpretative our reality truly is.

Often regarded as one of the most debated and symbolically complex works in Western art history, The Arnolfini Portrait continues to be extensively analyzed, constantly challenging how we interpret what we see.

We’d love to hear from you !! Drop your thoughts and let us know what you want us to dive into next Friday 📽️🎞️

Content & Design:Hena Anvar

This week on NeuroReflections, we look into Black Swan (2010) an American psychological horror thriller film directed by Darren Aronofsky, starring Natalie Portman.

A melodrama told with passionate intensity,exploring how striving for perfection leads to the deterioration of Nina’s mental state, resulting in hallucinations, paranoia, and a blurring of reality and imagination.

Nina’s experience reflects how severe psychological stress interacts with underlying vulnerability,the “stress–diathesis model” where symptoms emerge from the interaction between stressors and individual susceptibility rather than existing in isolation.

Psychosis, in this context, is not always a primary disorder but a syndrome that requires careful clinical interpretation.

Cinema often dramatizes mental illness, but as medical students, our role is to interpret it critically.Psychosis exists on a spectrum. Context matters.

Empathy, support, and reduction of stressors play a key role in patient recovery and care.

We’d love to hear from you !! Drop your thoughts and let us know what you want us to dive into next Friday 📽️🎞️

Content & Design:Hena Anvar

This week on NeuroReflections, we look into Black Swan (2010) an American psychological horror thriller film directed by Darren Aronofsky, starring Natalie Portman.

A melodrama told with passionate intensity,exploring how striving for perfection leads to the deterioration of Nina’s mental state, resulting in hallucinations, paranoia, and a blurring of reality and imagination.

Nina’s experience reflects how severe psychological stress interacts with underlying vulnerability,the “stress–diathesis model” where symptoms emerge from the interaction between stressors and individual susceptibility rather than existing in isolation.

Psychosis, in this context, is not always a primary disorder but a syndrome that requires careful clinical interpretation.

Cinema often dramatizes mental illness, but as medical students, our role is to interpret it critically.Psychosis exists on a spectrum. Context matters.

Empathy, support, and reduction of stressors play a key role in patient recovery and care.

We’d love to hear from you !! Drop your thoughts and let us know what you want us to dive into next Friday 📽️🎞️

Content & Design:Hena Anvar

Introducing our new series: Neuroreflection 🧠✨
Neurology isn’t just confined to textbooks it lives in the stories we watch, the art we feel, and the music we hear. 🎬🎨🎶
From cinematic portrayals to creative expressions, media offers a powerful glimpse into neurological and psychological conditions capturing emotions, perceptions, and lived experiences beyond clinical definitions.

Through Neuroreflection, we explore the intersection of brain science and storytelling—one frame, one note, one story at a time.

Migraine is a common neurological disease, mostly benign. Growing evidence shows the migraine and migraine-specific characteristics, such as aura and headache frequency, might be associated with an increase of ischaemic stroke and haemorrhagic stroke.

This study aimed to evaluate whether the migraine is associated with the increased risk of ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke. It also investigated how the risk varies by the migraine subtypes.

This was a retrospective case-control analysis using EHR data from the large US All of Us Research Program. In this study they compared individuals with migraine to those without migraine and adjusted for age, s*x at birth, and several vascular risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, hyperlipidaemia, to***co use, and depression.

This study demonstrated that participants with migraine had a significantly higher risk of ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke compared to non-migraine participants. When categorised by subtypes, the risk was higher in individuals with chronic migraine and migraine with aura, even after adjusting for the stroke risk factors. Women with migraine with aura have a higher risk of overall stroke, and aura beginning after age 50 is associated with increased stroke risk.

Migraine was found to be an independent risk factor for both forms of stroke in this study. Future researchers should further investigate the increased risk of stroke in people with migraine with aura and chronic migraine, as well as how the underlying biological mechanisms are associated with the increased risk of stroke.

Seah N, Chong CD, Dumitrascu OM, Schwedt TJ, Cao Z and Wu T (2025) Migraine is associated with a higher risk of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke: an analysis of the All of Us database. Front. Pain Res. 6:1646142. doi: 10.3389/fpain.2025.1646142

Scientific writer and post designer-

Behind every great initiative is a strong team.
Proud to introduce the Team Leads of Dandy Armenia — committed to growth, collaboration, and advancing neurosurgical sciences together.

Behind every great initiative is a strong team.
Proud to introduce the Team Leads of Dandy Armenia — committed to growth, collaboration, and advancing neurosurgical sciences together.

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) famously strips away language and recent memories, yet “musical memory” often remains remarkably intact. This phenomenon suggests that music is processed in brain regions that are uniquely resistant to early neurodegeneration. Understanding this “backdoor” to the brain offers a powerful, non-pharmacological way to treat dementia.
By conducting a randomized, cross-over, single-blind study researchers aimed to evaluate how personalized music interventions impact cognitive function, emotional regulation, and neural connectivity in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s.
During the trial participants were exposed to autobiographical music (preferred music) for across two years over the course of a 3-hour session during two visits, intervention sessions were delivered as 10-minute segments at the top of each hour, as a minimum of 10 minutes of music stimulation is required to generate an effect. Brain activity was monitored using functional MRI (fMRI) brain mapping (study visit 3) alongside standard cognitive tests (MMSE) and mood assessments to analyze whether music intervention enhances connectivity within the brain’s arousal networks compared to control groups and resting states.
The results were striking as the patients were significantly more awake and alert (lower SSS scores) and showed marked clinical improvement (higher CGIC scores) when listening to preferred music compared to the control. The fMRI data revealed that music intervention enhanced connectivity in key nodes like the superior parietal cortex and the amygdala-hippocampal transition zone, with the parietal connectivity correlating directly to the clinical improvements observed.
While music effectively heightens arousal, it remains unclear if it can fundamentally alter the long-term trajectory of cognitive decline. And yet, the most exciting question remains: is this a fleeting spark or a lasting flame? We need to investigate whether frequent, long-term ‘doses’ of music can permanently rewire these neural circuits or if the brain returns to its quiet, resting state once the headphones come off.
Credit: .n.r