Alzheimer’s disease tagged posts

This is a UHFSine photo of the layers created by Sine waves. Credit: Brian Patchett/Utah Valley University

Physicists are literally applying rocket science to the field of medical diagnostics. With a few key changes, the researchers used a noninvasive ultrasonic technique originally developed to detect microscopic flaws in solid fuel rockets to successfully detect cell stiffness changes associated with certain cancers and other diseases. The method uses sound waves to manipulate and probe cells.

The method combines a low-frequency ultrasonic wave to levitate the cells and confine them to a single layer within a fluid and a high-frequency ultrasonic wave to measure the cell’s stiffness. “An acoustic wave is a pressure wave so it travels as a wave of high and low pressure...

This is a photograph of brain areas whose pattern of activation matched significantly while watching a video and remembering that same video. Credit: James Keidel

Rehearsing information immediately after being given it may be all you need to make it a permanent memory, a new study suggests. Psychologists found that the same area of the brain activated when laying down a memory is also activated when rehearsing that memory. It has implications for any situation in which accurate recall of an event is critical, such as witnessing an accident or crime.

The study showed that the brain region known as the posterior cingulate – an area whose damage is often seen in those with Alzheimer’s – plays a crucial role in creating permanent memories...

Neural stem cells (green) migrate throughout an injured brain site in DLB mice and begin to differentiate into astrocytes (red), leading to improved motor and cognitive function. Blurton-Jones lab

DLB is the 2nd-most common type of age-related dementia after Alzheimer’s disease and is characterized by the accumulation of a protein alpha-synuclein that collects into spherical Lewy bodies – which also accumulate in related disorders, including Parkinson’s disease. This pathology, in turn, impairs the normal function of neurons, leading to alterations in critical brain chemicals and neuronal communication and, eventually, to cell death.

One day transplantation of neural stem cells into human patients might help overcome the motor and cognitive impairments of DLB...

Highlights •Lack of neuronal IFN-β-IFNAR signaling causes brain Lewy body accumulation •IFN-β deficiency causes late-stage autophagy block and thereby α-synuclein aggregation •IFN-β promotes neuronal autophagy and α-synuclein clearance •Ifnb gene therapy prevents dopaminergic neuron loss in a familial PD model

Non-inheritable PD may be caused by functional changes in the immune regulating gene Interferon-beta. Treatment with Interferon-beta-gene therapy successfully prevented neuronal death and disease effects in an experimental model of PD.

7-10 million people worldwide are living with PD. More than half of PD patients develop progressive disease showing signs of dementia similar to Alzheimer’s disease...