Alzheimer’s is all around us. It’s pretty hard to ignore considering it not only is the the most common form of dementia but it also affects over 3 million Americans each year – mostly folks over the age 65. However, one of the biggest misconceptions about the disease is that it is normal aging when it is in fact, it is progressive neurological disease. Despite a net loss of neurons occurring, most Alzheimer’s patients do not die directly due to the disease but often of other pathogens like pneumonia. But as many can attest the effects on the quality of life is devastating. And despite many years of research and clinical observations we are still no where close to curing it.
So this leads to the question – what is going on exactly? Like most neurological diseases the exact cause of Alzheimer’s is unknown. But an interesting hallmark of Alzheimer’s is the presence of neurofibrilary tangles. What these essentially are tangles of the misfolded protein tau that clump together within various brain regions. Research has found that these tangles can occur in the entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, and cerebral cortex. These brain regions are specifically associated with spatial memory, emotion, and higher cognitive thinking. So its pretty easy to figure out how the symptomatology comes about.
Another thing of note is that working memory generally decreases with age due to changes in cellular firing and signaling. But one study did find that with rhesus monkeys they could reverse the negative effects on working memory with cyclic AMP, an important messenger in cellular signaling processes.
Sources:
1) http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_what_is_alzheimers.asp
2) https://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/publication/2011-2012-alzheimers-disease-progress-report/understanding-biology-alzheimers
Alzheimer’s – What Makes Memories
