The Brain: Alzheimer's and dementia news and discussions

weatheriscool
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Researchers discover non-invasive stimulation of eye as potential treatment of depression and dementia
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07- ... ssion.html
by The University of Hong Kong

A joint research team from the LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) and City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has discovered that the electrical stimulation of the eye surface can alleviate depression-like symptoms and improve cognitive function in animal models. These significant findings were recently published in Brain Stimulation and the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Major depression is the most common and severe psychiatric disorder across the world. Recently, the World Health Organization reported that the COVID-19 pandemic had triggered a massive increase in the number of people with anxiety and depression. About a quarter of patients do not respond adequately to the treatments available.

Dr. Lim Lee Wei, Assistant Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences, HKUMed, and a former Lee Kuan Yew Research Fellow in Singapore, reported in 2015 that deep brain stimulation of the prefrontal cortex in the brains of animals could improve memory function and relieve depressive symptoms. These therapeutic effects were attributed to the growth of brain cells in the hippocampus, a region of the brain known to be involved in learning and memory function. However, this technique, also known as deep brain stimulation, is invasive and requires surgery to implant electrodes in the brain, which may cause side effects such as infections and other post-operative complications.
weatheriscool
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Whole blood exchange could offer disease-modifying therapy for Alzheimer's disease, study finds
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07- ... eimer.html

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by University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

A novel, disease-modifying therapy for Alzheimer's disease may involve the whole exchange of blood, which effectively decreased the formation of amyloid plaque in the brains of mice, according to a new study from UTHealth Houston.

A research team led by senior author Claudio Soto, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Neurology with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, in collaboration with first author Akihiko Urayama, Ph.D., associate professor in the department, performed a series of whole blood exchange treatments to partially replace blood from mice exhibiting Alzheimer's disease-causing amyloid precursor proteins with complete blood from healthy mice of the same genetic background. The results of the study were published today in Molecular Psychiatry.
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weatheriscool
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Researcher uses 'fuzzy' AI algorithms to aid people with memory loss
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by Matthew Tierney, University of Toronto
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-fuz ... eople.html
A new computer algorithm developed by the University of Toronto's Parham Aarabi can store and recall information strategically—just like our brains.

The associate professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering, in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, has also created an experimental tool that leverages the new algorithm to help people with memory loss.

"Most people think of AI as more robot than human," says Aarabi, whose framework is explored in a paper being presented this week at the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Conference in Glasgow. "I think that needs to change."

In the past, computers have relied on their users to tell them exactly what information to store. But with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as deep learning and neural nets, there has been a move toward "fuzzier" approaches.

"Ten years ago, computing was all about absolutes," says Aarabi. "CPUs processed and stored memory data in an exact way to make binary decisions. There was no ambiguity.

"Now we want our computers to make approximate conclusions and guess percentages. We want an image processor to tell us, for example, that there's a 10 percent chance a picture contains a car and a 40 percent chance that it contains a pedestrian."
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weatheriscool
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Re: Alzheimer's and dementia news and discussions

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Moderate drinking linked to brain changes and cognitive decline
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by Public Library of Science
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07- ... cline.html
Consumption of seven or more units of alcohol per week is associated with higher iron levels in the brain, according to a study of almost 21,000 people publishing July 14 in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. Iron accumulation in the brain has been linked with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and is a potential mechanism for alcohol-related cognitive decline.

There is growing evidence that even moderate alcohol consumption can adversely impact brain health. Anya Topiwala of the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and colleagues explored relationships between alcohol consumption and brain iron levels. Their 20,965 participants from the UK Biobank reported their own alcohol consumption, and their brains were scanned using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Almost 7,000 also had their livers imaged using MRI to assess levels of systemic iron. All individuals completed a series of simple tests to assess cognitive and motor function.
weatheriscool
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New imaging method could lead to diagnosis of early stage Parkinson's disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07- ... stage.html
by Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Parkinson's is a progressive and debilitating disease of the brain that eventually compromises patients' ability to walk and even to talk. Its diagnosis is complex, and in the early stages—impossible.

The usual method of visualizing brain structure utilizes a technique most of us are familiar with, called MRI. However, it is not sensitive enough to reveal the biological changes that take place in the brain of Parkinson patients, and at present is primarily only used to eliminate other possible diagnoses.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) researchers, led by Professor Aviv Mezer, realized that the cellular changes in Parkinson's could possibly be revealed by adapting a related technique, known as quantitative MRI (qMRI). Their method has enabled them to look at microstructures within the part of the deep brain known as the striatum—an organ which is known to deteriorate during the progress of Parkinson's disease. Using a novel method of analysis, developed by Mezer's doctoral student, Elior Drori, biological changes in the cellar tissue of the striatum were clearly revealed. Moreover, they were able to demonstrate that these changes were associated with the early stages of Parkinson's and patients' movement dysfunction. Their findings were published today in the journal Science Advances.
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Common viruses may be triggering the onset of Alzheimer's disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07- ... eimer.html
by Tufts University

Alzheimer's disease can begin almost imperceptibly, often masquerading in the early months or years as forgetfulness that is common in older age. What causes the disease remains largely a mystery.

But researchers at Tufts University and the University of Oxford, using a three-dimensional human tissue culture model mimicking the brain, have shown that varicella zoster virus (VZV), which commonly causes chickenpox and shingles, may activate herpes simplex (HSV), another common virus, to set in motion the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Normally HSV-1—one of the main variants of the virus—lies dormant within the neurons of the brain, but when it is activated it leads to accumulation of tau and amyloid beta proteins, and loss of neuronal function—signature features found in patients with Alzheimer's.
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How microglia contribute to Alzheimer's disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08- ... sease.html
by Anne Trafton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease is a reduction in the firing of some neurons in the brain, which contributes to the cognitive decline that patients experience. A new study from MIT shows how a type of cells called microglia contribute to this slowdown of neuron activity.

The study found that microglia that express the APOE4 gene, one of the strongest genetic risk factors for Alzheimer's disease, cannot metabolize lipids normally. This leads to a buildup of excess lipids that interferes with nearby neurons' ability to communicate with each other.

"APOE4 is a major genetic risk factor, and many people carry it, so the hope is that by studying APOE4, that will also provide a bigger picture of the fundamental pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease and what fundamental cell processes have to go wrong to result in Alzheimer's disease," says Li-Huei Tsai, director of MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the senior author of the study.

The findings suggest that if researchers could find a way to restore normal lipid metabolism in microglia, that might help to treat some of the symptoms of the disease.

MIT postdoc Matheus Victor is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Cell Stem Cell.
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New insights into Huntington's disease
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-insights- ... sease.html
by Meike Mossig, University of Bremen
Huntington's chorea is a hereditary disease that leads to cognitive and motor impairments and death. Scientists at the University of Bremen have worked with international partners to elucidate the mechanism by which the mutated huntingtin protein can be kept at bay.

"We have uncovered a mechanism by which the body's own protein folding helpers keep the mutated huntingtin protein at bay," explains project leader and professor Janine Kirstein at the University of Bremen. Protein-folding helpers allow proteins to take on and maintain their correct structure to perform their multifaceted functions. The researchers were already familiar with three of the helpers, but what they didn't know yet was what the binding with the mutated huntingtin protein looked like, which of the three folding aids could recognize the mutated protein, and what its binding looked like.

"We have now been able to identify this using the crosslinking mass spectrometry method," says the biochemist. This method can precisely determine protein interactions. However, there was still a long way to go in terms of understanding the bond. "It was only through modeling that we were able to better understand the interaction between protein-folding helpers and mutant huntingtin."
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Increased concentrations of GPNMB in blood samples could be biomarker for Parkinson's disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08- ... inson.html
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress

A large team of researchers working at the University of Pennsylvania, has found evidence that suggests increased concentrations of the transmembrane protein Glycoprotein Nonmetastatic Melanoma Protein B (GPNMB) in blood samples could be an early biomarker for Parkinson's disease. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes how they studied possible risk factors associated with chromosome 7 in Parkinson's disease patients and what they found regarding a link to the GPNMB. Brit Mollenhauer and Christine A. F. von Arnim have published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team in Philadelphia.

Parkinson's disease is a neurogenerative disease that leads to shaking and stiffness of limbs and appendages along with problems with balance—as the disease progresses, most patients develop problems with walking. Its cause is still under investigation though most in the field believe it is an instance of a genetic disorder making people more susceptible to some still unknown environmental element. And while there are a number of therapies used to treat symptoms (such as dopamine), there is no cure.

Prior research has shown that damage to nerves begins long before patients experience symptoms. For that reason, scientists have been looking for early markers that could be used to allow for earlier diagnosis and treatment. In this new effort, the researchers began their work by noting that, despite the identification of multiple genes that are thought to contribute to a risk for developing the disease, the actual genes involved are still not known. For that reason, they chose to focus their work on the development of a-synuclein (aSyn)—fibrils that form in Parkinson's patients that are a hallmark of the disease.
weatheriscool
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Boosting neuron formation restores memory in mice with Alzheimer's disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08- ... -mice.html
by Rockefeller University Press
Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have discovered that increasing the production of new neurons in mice with Alzheimer's disease (AD) rescues the animals' memory defects. The study, to be published August 19 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, shows that new neurons can incorporate into the neural circuits that store memories and restore their normal function, suggesting that boosting neuron production could be a viable strategy to treat AD patients.

New neurons are produced from neural stem cells via a process known as neurogenesis. Previous studies have shown that neurogenesis is impaired in both AD patients and laboratory mice carrying genetic mutations linked to AD, particularly in a region of the brain called the hippocampus that is crucial for memory acquisition and retrieval.

"However, the role of newly formed neurons in memory formation, and whether defects in neurogenesis contribute to the cognitive impairments associated with AD, is unclear," says Professor Orly Lazarov of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology in the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine.
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