ABC News (June 22, 2018): Will People with Down Syndrome Unlock the Mystery of Alzheimer’s Disease? - June 22, 2018
A few years after Alejandra Borunda, 31, a resident of Phoenix, was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s disease, she began experiencing depression. On her neurologist’s recommendation, she made an appointment with a therapist, who asked her some unsettling questions. After telling him she was from the city’s West Side, which has a sizeable Hispanic population, he ...
Read more...Newsweek (June 5, 2018): Inside the $28 Million Alzheimer’s Village Where Patients Can Shop, Farm and Socialize Freely - June 12, 2018
Computerized cognitive testing may be as valid as paper and pencil testing in detecting subtle amyloid-related decrements. Remote and computerized cognitive testing promises to increase the speed and ease of research progress.
Read more...National Institutes of Health (May 15, 2018): Mediterranean Diet May Slow Development of Alzheimer’s Disease - May 15, 2018
The first published data from the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s Disease (A4) trial support the hypothesis that higher brain amyloid levels represent an early preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). An analysis of screening data from the trial showed that elevated amyloid in clinically normal older adults was associated with lower cognitive test scores and increased ...
Read more...Japan Times (May 13, 2018): Japan’s Employers Improving Support for Workers with Early-Onset Dementia - May 14, 2018
The MIT Museum will present The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (May 3, 2018 – December 31, 2018). This traveling exhibition is the first major presentation of Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s pioneering drawings of the brain and brain cells, and also features contemporary visualizations that illuminate the impact of ...
Read more...Japan Times (April 10, 2018): Art For All - April 17, 2018
I remember the bag from my childhood. Transparent and oblong, just large enough to fit a handful of papers, a few essentials, and a plastic brain.
My 93-year-old grandmother, Marjorie Pearlson, once loved this bag, filling it with conversation starters. She was a woman who could talk to any stranger and pull an organ replica out ...
Read more...Harvard Medical School (April 12, 2018): That Evening Sun - April 16, 2018
Alzheimer’s has long been one of the heaviest therapeutic albatrosses slung round drug developers’ necks. The memory-eating disease, expected to afflict 15 million Americans by 2060 (and tens of millions more around the world as life expectancy increases), has no cure; a new drug for the condition hasn’t been approved in well over a decade; ...
Read more...The Atlantic (April 11, 2018): Why My Grandmother Carried a Plastic Brain in Her Purse - April 12, 2018
Rochelle Youner, who lives at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, a nursing home in the Bronx, walked up to a kiosk in a common area of the home’s first floor and pressed a button below a small icon depicting a baseball glove.
“That’s the real stuff — that’s a mitt, all right,” Ms. Youner, 80, said, ...
Read more...AlzForum (March 28, 2018): 44-Year Study Ties Midlife Fitness to Lower Dementia Risk - April 2, 2018
An assisted-living facility in Liverpool, England, was confronted with an unusual dilemma in 2013: An elderly resident with severe dementia suddenly became terrified of water and showering — and categorically refused to bathe.
“His demeanor and his well-being started disintegrating. It became socially unacceptable,” recalled Carol Rogers, executive director for education and visitors at National Museums ...
Read more...CBS News (March 20, 2018): Alzheimer’s Costs Americans $277 Billion a Year – and Rising - March 20, 2018
A neural circuit mechanism involved in preserving the specificity of memories has been identified by investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Regenerative Medicine and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI).
They also identified a genetic “switch” that can slow down memory generalization — the loss of specific details over time that occurs in ...
Read more...New York Times (March 11, 2018): Museums Fight the Isolation and Pain of Dementia - March 14, 2018
In March 2015, Li-Huei Tsai set up a tiny disco for some of the mice in her laboratory. For an hour each day, she placed them in a box lit only by a flickering strobe. The mice – which had been engineered to produce plaques of the peptide amyloid-β in the brain, a hallmark of ...
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