Natasha May Young people with severe depression experience disruptions in the way regions of their brain communicate with each other which are distinct from those observed in adults, a study has found. The research published on Tuesday in Nature Mental Health could be used to identify potential targets for brain stimulation therapies, extending their existing application from adults to youth. The study analysed the brain scans of 810 young people aged 12-25, of which 440 had major depressive disorder (MDD) and 370 were healthy comparison individuals. The study led by the University of Melbourne found that in those with MDD, some densely connected regions of the brain (known as hubs) showed stronger connectivity and others showed weaker connectivity compared with youth without depression. Young woman running at sunset on Australian beach Nutrition and exercise as good as therapy for mild and moderate depression, study says Prof Andrew Zalesky, the supervising researcher, said they found the connectivity was particularly strong in the part of the brain associated with someone’s internalised thoughts and rumination. “We see that in youth with depression, the default mode is more strongly connected, it’s more activated, which suggests that there is a greater focus on self-thought and self-reflection,” Zalesky said. The study, whose first author was third-year PhD student at the University of Melbourne, Nga (Connie) Yan Tse, also found the extent of these differences could reliably predict how severe a person’s depressive symptoms were. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Depression; Brain imaging
Link ID: 29491 - Posted: 09.25.2024

Jon Hamilton Scientists have created a virtual brain network that can predict the behavior of individual neurons in a living brain. The model is based on a fruit fly’s visual system, and it offers scientists a way to quickly test ideas on a computer before investing weeks or months in experiments involving actual flies or other lab animals. “Now we can start with a guess for how the fly brain might work before anyone has to make an experimental measurement,” says Srini Turaga, a group leader at the Janelia Research Campus, a part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The approach, described in the journal Nature, also suggests that power-hungry artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT might consume much less energy if they used some of the computational strategies found in a living brain. A fruit fly brain is “small and energy efficient,” says Jakob Macke, a professor at the University of Tübingen and an author of the study. “It’s able to do so many computations. It’s able to fly, it’s able to walk, it’s able to detect predators, it’s able to mate, it’s able to survive—using just 100,000 neurons.” In contrast, AI systems typically require computers with tens of billions of transistors. Worldwide, these systems consume as much power as a small country. “When we think about AI right now, the leading charge is to make these systems more power efficient,” says Ben Crowley, a computational neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory who was not involved in the study. Borrowing strategies from the fruit fly brain might be one way to make that happen, he says. © 2024 npr

Keyword: Brain imaging; Evolution
Link ID: 29484 - Posted: 09.18.2024

By Julian Nowogrodzki Millions of adults around the world take potent drugs such as Wegovy to shed pounds. Should kids do the same? That question is growing more urgent in the face of mounting evidence that children and adolescents, as well as adults, slim down if they take the latest generation of obesity drugs. Clinical trials1,2 have shown that many adolescents with obesity lose substantial amounts of weight on these drugs, which work by mimicking a natural hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1). The GLP-1 mimics semaglutide, commonly sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, and liraglutide, marketed as Saxenda and Victoza, are approved in the United States and Europe to treat obesity in children as young as 12. Now a trial has produced some of the first data on anti-obesity drugs in even younger children: those aged 6 to 11. The study3 reports that children who were treated with liraglutide showed a decrease in their body mass index (BMI), a measure of obesity. The results were published on 10 September in The New England Journal of Medicine. Nature asked specialists in obesity about the costs and benefits of giving the GLP-1 mimics to youngsters who are still growing and developing. Why test powerful weight-loss drugs on kids? Most kids with obesity become teens with obesity and then adults with obesity. Many young children with severe obesity have “already developed significant health issues”, says physician Sarah Ro, who directs the University of North Carolina Physicians Network Weight Management Program and has served as a consultant to Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of semaglutide. Her clinic in Hillsborough treats children with severe obesity who have health issues such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes or an advanced form of liver disease linked to excess weight. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29482 - Posted: 09.18.2024

By Max Kozlov A low-cost diabetes drug slows ageing in male monkeys and is particularly effective at delaying the effects of ageing on the brain, finds a small study that tracked the animals for more than three years1. The results raise the possibility that the widely used medication, metformin, could one day be used to postpone ageing in humans. Monkeys that received metformin daily showed slower age-associated brain decline than did those not given the drug. Furthermore, their neuronal activity resembled that of monkeys about six years younger (equivalent to around 18 human years) and the animals had enhanced cognition and preserved liver function. This study, published in Cell on 12 September, helps to suggest that, although dying is inevitable, “ageing, the way we know it, is not”, says Nir Barzilai, a geroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, who was not involved in the study. Metformin has been used for more than 60 years to lower blood-sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes — and is the second most-prescribed medication in the United States. The drug has long been known to have effects beyond treating diabetes, leading researchers to study it against conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and ageing. Data from worms, rodents, flies and people who have taken the drug for diabetes suggest the drug might have anti-ageing effects. But its effectiveness against ageing had not been tested directly in primates, and it is unclear whether its potential anti-ageing effects are achieved by lowering blood sugar or through a separate mechanism. This led Guanghui Liu, a biologist who studies ageing at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and his colleagues to test the drug on 12 elderly male cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fasciucularis); another 16 elderly monkeys and 18 young or middle-aged animals served as a control group. Every day, treated monkeys received the standard dose of metformin that is used to control diabetes in humans. The animals took the drug for 40 months, which is equivalent to about 13 years for humans. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Obesity
Link ID: 29481 - Posted: 09.14.2024

By Ellen Barry A study of adolescent brain development that tested children before and after coronavirus pandemic lockdowns in the United States found that girls’ brains aged far faster than expected, something the researchers attributed to social isolation. The study from the University of Washington, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, measured cortical thinning, a process that starts in either late childhood or early adolescence, as the brain begins to prune redundant synapses and shrink its outer layer. Thinning of the cortex is not necessarily bad; some scientists frame the process as the brain rewiring itself as it matures, increasing its efficiency. But the process is known to accelerate in stressful conditions, and accelerated thinning is correlated with depression and anxiety. Scans taken in 2021, after shutdowns started to lift, showed that both boys and girls had experienced rapid cortical thinning during that period. But the effect was far more notable in girls, whose thinning had accelerated, on average, by 4.2 years ahead of what was expected; the thinning in boys’ brains had accelerated 1.4 years ahead of what was expected. “That is a stunning difference,” said Patricia K. Kuhl, a director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington and one of the study’s authors. The results, she added, suggested that “a girl who came in at 11, and then returned to the lab at age 14, now has a brain that looks like an 18-year-old’s.” Dr. Kuhl attributed the change to “social deprivation caused by the pandemic,” which she suggested had hit adolescent girls harder because they are more dependent on social interaction — in particular, talking through problems with friends — as a way to release stress. The difference between the genders “is just as clear as night and day,” Dr. Kuhl said. “In the girls, the effects were all over the brain — all the lobes, both hemispheres.” © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29477 - Posted: 09.11.2024

Alzheimer’s disease impairs a patient by destroying neurons, which otherwise live for decades, and by disrupting communication among the remaining brain cells. As neurons die, the areas of the brain they constitute begin to atrophy. A detailed picture of the progression is still under investigation, and the disease follows different tracks in different patients, but researchers have found brains afflicted with Alzheimer’s typically atrophy along the same basic pattern. A better understanding of that pattern may provide the foundation for methods to diagnose the disease earlier, which in turn would give medication and lifestyle changes the best chance of slowing dementia. In broad strokes, here’s how Alzheimer’s tends to change a brain. © 2024 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 29476 - Posted: 09.11.2024

Jon Hamilton Aging and Alzheimer's leave the brain starved of energy. Now scientists think they've found a way to aid the brain's metabolism — in mice. PM Images/Getty Images The brain needs a lot of energy — far more than any other organ in the body — to work properly. And aging and Alzheimer’s disease both seem to leave the brain underpowered. But an experimental cancer drug appeared to re-energize the brains of mice that had a form of Alzheimer’s — and even restore their ability to learn and remember. The finding, published in the journal Science, suggests that it may eventually be possible to reverse some symptoms of Alzheimer’s in people, using drugs that boost brain metabolism. The results also offer an approach to treatment that’s unlike anything on the market today. Current drugs for treating Alzheimer’s, such as lecanemab and donanemab, target the sticky amyloid plaques that build up in a patient’s brain. These drugs can remove plaques and slow the disease process, but do not improve memory or thinking. The result should help “change how we think about targeting this disease,” says Shannon Macauley, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky who was not involved in the study. The new research was prompted by a lab experiment that didn’t go as planned. A team at Stanford was studying an enzyme called IDO1 that plays a key role in keeping a cell’s metabolism running properly. They suspected that in Alzheimer’s disease, IDO1 was malfunctioning in a way that limited the brain’s ability to turn nutrients into energy. © 2024 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 29462 - Posted: 09.04.2024

By Carl Zimmer The human brain, more than any other attribute, sets our species apart. Over the past seven million years or so, it has grown in size and complexity, enabling us to use language, make plans for the future and coordinate with one another at a scale never seen before in the history of life. But our brains came with a downside, according to a study published on Wednesday. The regions that expanded the most in human evolution became exquisitely vulnerable to the ravages of old age. “There’s no free lunch,” said Sam Vickery, a neuroscientist at the Jülich Research Center in Germany and an author of the study. The 86 billion neurons in the human brain cluster into hundreds of distinct regions. For centuries, researchers could recognize a few regions, like the brainstem, by hallmarks such as the clustering of neurons. But these big regions turned out to be divided into smaller ones, many of which were revealed only with the help of powerful scanners. As the structure of the human brain came into focus, evolutionary biologists became curious about how the regions evolved from our primate ancestors. (Chimpanzees are not our direct ancestors, but both species descended from a common ancestor about seven million years ago.) The human brain is three times as large as that of chimpanzees. But that doesn’t mean all of our brain regions expanded at the same pace, like a map drawn on an inflating balloon. Some regions expanded only a little, while others grew a lot. Dr. Vickery and his colleagues developed a computer program to analyze brain scans from 189 chimpanzees and 480 humans. Their program mapped each brain by recognizing clusters of neurons that formed distinct regions. Both species had 17 brain regions, the researchers found. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Evolution
Link ID: 29459 - Posted: 08.31.2024

By Julian Nowogrodzki A newly devised ‘brain clock’ can determine whether a person’s brain is ageing faster than their chronological age would suggest1. Brains age faster in women, countries with more inequality and Latin American countries, the clock indicates. “The way your brain ages, it’s not just about years. It’s about where you live, what you do, your socio-economic level, the level of pollution you have in your environment,” says Agustín Ibáñez, the study’s lead author and a neuroscientist at Adolfo Ibáñez University in Santiago. “Any country that wants to invest in the brain health of the people, they need to address structural inequalities.” The work is “truly impressive”, says neuroscientist Vladimir Hachinski at Western University in London, Canada, who was not involved in the study. It was published on 26 August in Nature Medicine. Only connect The researchers looked at brain ageing by assessing a complex form of functional connectivity, a measure of the extent to which brain regions are interacting with one another. Functional connectivity generally declines with age. The authors drew on data from 15 countries: 7 (Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile and Argentina) that are in Latin America or the Caribbean and 8 (China, Japan, the United States, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Ireland) that are not. Of the 5,306 participants, some were healthy, some had Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia and some had mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to dementia. The researchers measured participants’ resting brain activity — that when they were doing nothing in particular — using either functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or electroencephalography (EEG). The first technique measures blood flow in the brain, and the second measures brain-wave activity. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Stress
Link ID: 29458 - Posted: 08.31.2024

By Michael Eisenstein An analysis of almost 50,000 brain scans1 has revealed five distinct patterns of brain atrophy associated with ageing and neurodegenerative disease. The analysis has also linked the patterns to lifestyle factors such as smoking and alcohol consumption, as well as to genetic and blood-based markers associated with health status and disease risk. The work is a “methodological tour de force” that could greatly advance researchers’ understanding of ageing, says Andrei Irimia, a gerontologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who was not involved in the work. “Prior to this study, we knew that brain anatomy changes with ageing and disease. But our ability to grasp this complex interaction was far more modest.” The study was published on 15 August in Nature Medicine. Ageing can induce not only grey hair, but also changes in brain anatomy that are visible on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, with some areas shrivelling or undergoing structural alterations over time. But these transformations are subtle. “The human eye is not able to perceive patterns of systematic brain changes” associated with this decline, says Christos Davatzikos, a biomedical-imaging specialist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and an author of the paper. Previous studies have shown that machine-learning methods can extract the subtle fingerprints of ageing from MRI data. But these studies were often limited in scope and most included data from a relatively small number of people. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Brain imaging
Link ID: 29446 - Posted: 08.21.2024

Juliana Ki In the United States, it's estimated that about 7 million people are living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. But the number of people with a formal diagnosis is far less than that. Now, a new study suggests the likelihood of getting a formal diagnosis may depend on where a person lives. Researchers at the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College found that diagnosis rates vastly differ across the country and those different rates could not simply be explained by dementia risk factors, like if an area has more cases of hypertension, obesity and diabetes. The reasons behind the disparity aren't clear, but researchers speculate that stigma as well as access to primary care or behavioral neurological specialists may impact the odds of getting a formal diagnosis. Sponsor Message "We tell anecdotes about how hard it is to get a diagnosis and maybe it is harder in some places. It's not just your imagination. It actually is different from place to place," said Julie Bynum, the study's lead author and a geriatrician at the University of Michigan Medical School. Those differences may have potential consequences. That's because a formal diagnosis of Alzheimer's opens up access to treatments that may slow down the brain changes associated with the disease. Without that formal diagnosis, patients also would not be eligible for clinical trials or insurance coverage for certain medications. Even in cases of dementia where treatment is not an option, a diagnosis can also help in the planning for a patient's care. The findings, published last week in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia, emerged from two main questions: What percent of older adults are being diagnosed with dementia across communities in the U.S.? And is the percent we see different from what we would expect? © 2024 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 29444 - Posted: 08.21.2024

By Charles Q. Choi Tangles of tau protein track with cognitive impairments in Alzheimer’s disease. But even though tau is expressed throughout the brain, it clumps mainly in specific regions, such as the cortex and hippocampus. Other areas, such as the cerebellum and brainstem, are largely spared. Why tau aggregates this way has remained a mystery, but the answer may have to do with a previously overlooked, oversized and naturally occurring variant of the protein called “big tau,” according to a preprint posted 31 July on bioRxiv. Most tau isoforms range from 352 to 441 amino acids in size, but big tau comprises 758 amino acids. This supersized version is significantly more abundant in the cerebellum and brainstem than in the cortex and hippocampus of mice—and it is much less likely to form abnormal clumps than its smaller counterparts, the preprint shows. “Big tau can resist several key pathological changes related to [Alzheimer’s disease],” wrote study investigator Dah-eun Chloe Chung, a postdoctoral researcher in Huda Zoghbi’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine, in a post on X about the work. (Zoghbi declined to comment for this article because she says the study is currently under review for potential publication, and Chung did not respond to email requests for comment.) Scientists identified big tau in the peripheral nervous system in the 1990s, and it is the predominant tau isoform there. But most research on tau since then “ignores the existence of big tau,” according to a 2020 review. “No one has bothered to study this protein in the context of neurodegeneration,” says Veera Rajagopal, a research scientist at Regeneron, who did not take part in the new work. “All tau-related research has been focused on the shorter isoforms that play a key role in the tauopathies like Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia and so on. Now many will go after this big guy.” © 2024 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 29440 - Posted: 08.19.2024

Andrew Gregory Health editor Almost half of dementia cases worldwide could be prevented or delayed, a study has found, as experts named 14 risk factors. The number of people living with dementia globally is forecast to nearly triple to 153 million by 2050, and researchers warn this presents a rapidly growing threat to health and social care systems. Global health and social costs linked to dementia exceed $1tn (£780bn) a year, the research shows. However, in a seismic report published by the Lancet, 27 of the world’s leading dementia experts concluded that far more cases could be avoided or delayed than previously thought. Addressing 14 modifiable risk factors, starting in childhood and continuing throughout life, could prevent or delay 45% of dementia cases, even as people live longer, the Lancet commission on dementia said. The findings were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association international conference in the US. In an interview with the Guardian, the lead author of the research, Prof Gill Livingston, said it was increasingly clear that there was much more that millions of people could and should do to reduce the risk of dementia. Speaking from the conference in Philadelphia, Livingston said: “Many people around the world believe dementia is inevitable but it’s not. Our report concludes that you can hugely increase the chances of not developing dementia or pushing back its onset. “It’s also important to stress that while we now have stronger evidence that longer exposure to risk has a greater effect … it’s never too early or too late to take action.” © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 29420 - Posted: 08.03.2024

By Laura Sanders Alzheimer’s disease is hard to diagnose. But proteins in the blood might provide clarity. A series of recent findings, presented at the annual Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Philadelphia and in research papers, raise the possibility of a simple blood draw to help doctors figure out if a person’s cognitive problems are caused by Alzheimer’s — or something else. Decades ago, the only definitive way to get a diagnosis was an autopsy. Since then, scientists have figured out how to see the disease in living people. Spinal taps reveal levels of key proteins associated with the disease. And brain scans can illuminate the characteristic plaques and tangles that mar the brain in a person with Alzheimer’s disease. But spinal taps and brain scans are expensive and uncomfortable. A blood draw would lower barriers to diagnosis even further. That matters, because while Alzheimer’s has no cure, an easier, faster way to spot the disease could give people more time to discuss therapy options, including the newly available drugs that lower levels of amyloid, the sticky protein that accumulates in the brain in Alzheimer’s (SN: 7/17/23). Those drugs moderately slow the progression of the disease, but they come with serious side effects (SN: 6/7/21). “It’s an exciting moment,” says neuropathologist Eliezer Masliah of the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Md. “It’s an explosive moment,” one that has the potential to help reshape the diagnosis and treatment of the nearly 7 million people with Alzheimer’s in the United States, and millions more worldwide, he says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2024.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 29419 - Posted: 08.03.2024

By Laura Hercher It is impossible, of course, to identify the precise moment we first suspected the changes in my mother were something other than normal aging. In my own imperfect memory, what rises up is the first morning of a weeklong trip to Rome, when my mother woke up at 2 A.M., got dressed and went down for breakfast. A hotel employee found her wandering from room to room, looking for toast and coffee. She was jet-lagged, my brother and I assured each other uneasily. It could happen to anyone. But weren’t there cues? Didn’t she notice the darkened lobby, the stillness, the clock? If we had known then, would it have helped? To date, no Food and Drug Administration–approved therapy exists for asymptomatic people at risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). My mother was not a smoker, drank in moderation, read books, took classes, and spent the week soaking up everything the tour guide had to tell her about Caravaggio and Bernini like she was prepping for the quiz. It was five years before my mother received a diagnosis of dementia. Today, a simple blood test can detect changes in the brain that predict AD up to 15 years before the first symptoms emerge. For researchers, tools for early detection give a peek at the full spectrum of AD, pinpointing early seeds of pathology deep inside the brain. Cognitive decline—what we typically think of as the disease itself—is merely an end-stage denouement. “Dementia is a result. Dementia is a symptom,” explains Clifford R. Jack, Jr., a neuroradiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and chair of the Alzheimer’s Association (AA) working group responsible for new and controversial guidelines for the diagnosis of AD based on the underlying biology, not clinical presentation. Biomarkers for AD—signs of the physical changes in the brain that contribute to disease progression—have been available for more than two decades. In 2007 an international working group (IWG) of dementia experts described biomarkers as supporting evidence for a diagnosis of the disease, defined at that point largely as it was by neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer back in 1906: progressive memory loss, confusion and personality changes caused by distinctive plaques and tangles in the brain. For almost a century, those brain changes could only be confirmed on autopsy. While the affected person was alive, the label was merely presumptive. In fact, postmortem studies have found that up to 30 percent of people who received a clinical diagnosis of AD did not have the characteristic plaques and tangles.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 29416 - Posted: 08.02.2024

Jon Hamilton A key protein that helps assemble the brain early in life also appears to protect the organ from Alzheimer’s and other diseases of aging. A trio of studies published in the past year all suggest that the protein Reelin helps maintain thinking and memory in ailing brains, though precisely how it does this remains uncertain. The studies also show that when Reelin levels fall, neurons become more vulnerable. There’s growing evidence that Reelin acts as a “protective factor” in the brain, says Li-Huei Tsai, a professor at MIT and director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. “I think we’re on to something important for Alzheimer’s,” Tsai says. Various pieces of colorful trash, such as plastic bottle caps and plastics forks, are arranged in the shape of a human brain, on a light blue background. The research has inspired efforts to develop a drug that boosts Reelin or helps it function better, as a way to stave off cognitive decline. “You don't have to be a genius to be like, ‘More Reelin, that’s the solution,’” says Dr. Joseph Arboleda-Velasquez of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Eye and Ear. “And now we have the tools to do that.” From Colombia, a very special brain Reelin became something of a scientific celebrity in 2023, thanks to a study of a Colombian man who should have developed Alzheimer’s in middle age but didn’t. The man, who worked as a mechanic, was part of a large family that carries a very rare gene variant known as Paisa, a reference to the area around Medellin where it was discovered. Family members who inherit this variant are all but certain to develop Alzheimer’s in middle age. © 2024 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29413 - Posted: 07.31.2024

By Pam Belluck Scientists have made another major stride toward the long-sought goal of diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease with a simple blood test. On Sunday, a team of researchers reported that a blood test was significantly more accurate than doctors’ interpretation of cognitive tests and CT scans in signaling the condition. The study, published Sunday in the journal JAMA, found that about 90 percent of the time the blood test correctly identified whether patients with memory problems had Alzheimer’s. Dementia specialists using standard methods that did not include expensive PET scans or invasive spinal taps were accurate 73 percent of the time, while primary care doctors using those methods got it right only 61 percent of the time. “Not too long ago measuring pathology in the brain of a living human was considered just impossible,” said Dr. Jason Karlawish, a co-director of the Penn Memory Center at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the research. “This study adds to the revolution that has occurred in our ability to measure what’s going on in the brain of living humans.” The results, presented Sunday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Philadelphia, are the latest milestone in the search for affordable and accessible ways to diagnose Alzheimer’s, a disease that afflicts nearly seven million Americans and over 32 million people worldwide. Medical experts say the findings bring the field closer to a day when people might receive routine blood tests for cognitive impairment as part of primary care checkups, similar to the way they receive cholesterol tests. “Now, we screen people with mammograms and PSA or prostate exams and other things to look for very early signs of cancer,” said Dr. Adam Boxer, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study. “And I think we’re going to be doing the same thing for Alzheimer’s disease and hopefully other forms of neurodegeneration.” © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 29410 - Posted: 07.31.2024

By Bianca Nogrady The ability to remember and recognize a musical theme does not seem to be affected by age, unlike many other forms of memory. “You’ll hear anecdotes all the time of how people with severe Alzheimer’s can’t speak, can’t recognize people, but will sing the songs of their childhood or play the piano,” says Sarah Sauvé, a feminist music scientist now at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom. Past research has shown that many aspects of memory are affected by ageing, such as recall tasks that require real-time processing, whereas recognition tasks that rely on well-known information and automatic processes are not. The effect of age on the ability to recall music has also been investigated, but Sauvé was interested in exploring this effect in a real-world setting such as a concert. In her study1, published today in PLoS ONE, she tested how well a group of roughly 90 healthy adults, ranging in age from 18 to 86 years, were able to recognize familiar and unfamiliar musical themes at a live concert. Participants were recruited at a performance of the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra in St John’s, Canada. Another 31 people watched a recording of the concert in a laboratory. The study focused on three pieces of music played at the concert: Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart, which the researchers assumed most participants were familiar with, and two specially commissioned experimental pieces. One of these was tonal and easy to listen to; the other was more atonal and didn’t conform to the typical melodic norms of Western classical music. A short melodic phrase from each of the three pieces was played three times at the beginning of that piece, and participants then logged whenever they recognized that theme in the piece. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 29405 - Posted: 07.27.2024

By Christina Caron The 6-year-old boy sitting across from Douglas Tynan, a child and adolescent clinical psychologist based in Delaware, clearly did not have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Dr. Tynan was sure of that. But the boy’s first-grade teacher disagreed. He could be inattentive in class, but at home his behavior wasn’t out of the ordinary for a child his age. A voracious reader, he told Dr. Tynan that he liked to bring his own books to school because the ones in class were too easy. What his teacher had not considered was that the child was most likely academically gifted, as his mother had been as a child, Dr. Tynan said. (Studies have shown that Black children, like the boy in his office, are less likely to be identified for gifted programs.) Further testing revealed that Dr. Tynan was correct. The child wasn’t inattentive in school because of A.D.H.D. It was because he was bored. A.D.H.D. is a neurodevelopmental disorder that begins in childhood and typically involves inattention, disorganization, hyperactivity and impulsivity that cause trouble in two or more settings, like at home and at school. But those symptoms — for children and adults alike — can overlap with a multitude of other traits and disorders. In fact, difficulty concentrating is one of the most common symptoms listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, and it’s associated with 17 diagnoses, according to a study published in April. Patients need a careful evaluation to avoid either being misdiagnosed with A.D.H.D. or having a missed A.D.H.D. diagnosis. Here’s a look at some common problems that can mimic A.D.H.D. Mental health conditions like anxiety, depression or oppositional defiant disorder can show up as A.D.H.D.-like symptoms. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29404 - Posted: 07.27.2024

By Dana G. Smith Getting too little sleep later in life is associated with an increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease. But paradoxically, so is getting too much sleep. While scientists are confident that a connection between sleep and dementia exists, the nature of that connection is complicated. It could be that poor sleep triggers changes in the brain that cause dementia. Or people’s sleep might be disrupted because of an underlying health issue that also affects brain health. And changes in sleep patterns can be an early sign of dementia itself. Here’s how experts think about these various connections and how to gauge your risk based on your own sleep habits. Too Little Sleep Sleep acts like a nightly shower for the brain, washing away the cellular waste that accumulates during the day. During this process, the fluid that surrounds brain cells flushes out molecular garbage and transfers it into the bloodstream, where it’s then filtered by the liver and kidneys and expelled from the body. That trash includes the protein amyloid, which is thought to play a key role in Alzheimer’s disease. Everyone’s brain produces amyloid during the day, but problems can arise when the protein accumulates into sticky clumps, called plaques. The longer someone is awake, the more amyloid builds up and the less time the brain has to remove it. Scientists don’t know whether regularly getting too little sleep — typically considered six hours or less a night — is enough to trigger the accumulation of amyloid on its own. But research has found that among adults aged 65 to 85 who already have plaques in their brains, the less sleep they got, the more amyloid was present and the worse their cognition. “Is lack of sleep sufficient to cause dementia? Probably not by itself alone,” said Dr. Sudha Seshadri, the founding director of the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. “But it seems to definitely be a risk factor for increasing the risk of dementia, and perhaps also the speed of decline.” © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Alzheimers
Link ID: 29400 - Posted: 07.23.2024