Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that currently affects nearly 5% of people 65-year old and over 30% of those 85-year old. It is now estimated that there are 18−24 million people suffering from AD worldwide, two-thirds of whom are living in developed or developing countries, and this number is expected to reach 34 million by 2025. AD is characterized by the progressive accumulation of amyloid beta peptide (Aβ), neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) and hyperphosphorylated microtubule-associated tau protein. Many regions involved in memory and learning processes, such as the hippocampus and frontal cortex, show neuron apoptosis several years before clinical signs appear. Today there is no cure for this devastating disease and therefore it is of great interest for researchers to find new drugs that can hinder the disease process.  Current drugs on the market improve the function of still intact neurons, but do not inhibit the ongoing degenerative process leading to neuronal cell death. Curcumin, a biologically active component of turmeric (Curcuma longa) is used as a curry spice and herbal medicine for the treatment of inflammatory conditions, cancer, AIDS and other diseases. Epidemical studies in India, where turmeric is used routinely, show that the incidence of AD between the ages of 70 and 79 years is 4.4-fold less than in the USA.  Results on mice show that a low dose of curcumin significantly suppressed the inflammation, reduced oxidative damage and plaque burden and decreased the amount of insoluble amyloid. Compared to other antioxidant drugs, such as NSAID or ibuprofen, curcumin had fewer side effects. Evidence suggests that metals are concentrated in the AD brain and curcumin is a chelator which can bind the iron and copper (but not zinc) on beta amyloid, which may be one mechanism potentially contributing to amyloid reduction. In vivo, curcumin may protect cells from the beta amyloid attack and subsequent oxidative stress-induced damage in the antioxidant pathway. The findings of a previous study prove curcumin can induce cognitive improvement by enhancing the cholinergic system and its antioxidant activity. The studies on curcumin are incomplete and there needs to be further investigation of its neuroprotective mechanism.

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Researchers have shown for the first time that neural stem cells can rescue memory in mice with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, raising hopes of a potential treatment for the leading cause of elderly dementia that afflicts 5.3 million people in the U.S.

Dementia is a general term for a group of brain disorders that affect memory, judgment, personality and other mental functions. Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia, accounting for 60 to 80 percent of cases. There is currently no cure for Alzheimer’s.

Modified Alzheimer’s mice performed markedly better on memory tests a month after mouse neural stem cells were injected into their brains. The stem cells secreted a protein that created more neural connections, improving cognitive function.

“Essentially, the cells were producing fertilizer for the brain,” said Frank LaFerla, co-author of the study.

Lead author Mathew Blurton-Jones and colleagues worked with older mice predisposed to develop brains lesions called plaques and tangles that are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s.

To learn how the stem cells worked, the scientists examined the mouse brains. To their surprise, they discovered that just 6 percent of the stem cells had turned into neurons. (The majority became the other two main types of brain cells, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.) The stem cells didn’t improve cognition by becoming new neurons, nor did they act by reducing the number of plaques and tangles.

Rather, the stem cells were found to have secreted a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. This caused existing tissue to sprout new neurites, strengthening and increasing the number of connections between neurons. When the team selectively reduced BDNF from the stem cells, the benefit was lost, providing strong evidence that BDNF is critical to the effect of stem cells on memory and neuronal function.

“If you look at Alzheimer’s, it’s not the plaques and tangles that correlate best with dementia; it’s the loss of synapses, connections between neurons,” Blurton-Jones said. “The neural stem cells were helping the brain form new synapses and nursing the injured neurons back to health.”

Diseased mice injected directly with BDNF also improved cognitively but not as much as with the neural stem cells, which provided a more long-term and consistent supply of the protein.

“This gives us a lot of hope that stem cells or a product from them, such as BDNF, will be a useful treatment for Alzheimer’s,” LaFerla said.

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Although the fact that we generate new brain cells throughout life is no longer disputed, their purpose has been the topic of much debate. Now, an international collaboration of researchers made a big leap forward in understanding what all these newborn neurons might actually do. Their study, published in the July 10, 2009, issue of the journal Science, illustrates how these young cells improve our ability to navigate our environment.

“We believe that new brain cells help us to distinguish between memories that are closely related in space,” says senior author Fred H. Gage, Ph.D., …

When the first clues emerged that adult human brains continually sprout new neurons, one of the central tenets of neuroscience—we are born with all the brain cells we’ll ever have—was about to be overturned. Although it is never easy to shift a paradigm, a decade later the question is no longer whether neurogenesis exists but rather what all these new cells are actually good for.

“Adding new neurons could be a very problematic process if they don’t integrate properly into the existing neural circuitry,” says Gage. “There must be a clear benefit to outweigh the potential risk”.

…

But pattern separation might not be the only role that new neurons have in adult brain function: a computer model simulating the neuronal circuits in the dentate gyrus based on all available biological information suggested an additional function. “To our surprise, it turned out that newborn neurons actually form a link between individual elements of episodes occurring closely in time,” says Gage.

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Scientists are finding that the adult human brain is far more malleable than they once thought. Your behavior and environment can cause substantial rewiring of your brain or a reorganization of its functions.

Studies have shown that exercise can improve the brain’s executive skills, which include planning, organizing and multitasking. What you eat can also influence how effectively your brain operates.

Activities such as listening to music, playing video games and meditating may boost cognitive performance as well.
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Amputees sometimes experience phantom limb sensations, feeling pain, itching or other impulses coming from limbs that no longer exist. Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran worked with patients who had so-called phantom limbs, including Tom, a man who had lost one of his arms.

Ramachandran discovered that if he stroked Tom’s face, Tom felt like his missing fingers were also being touched. Each part of the body is represented by a different region of the somatosensory cortex, and, as it happens, the region for the hand is adjacent to the region for the face. The neuroscientist deduced that a remarkable change had taken place in Tom’s somatosensory cortex.

Ramachandran concluded that because Tom’s cortex was no longer getting input from his missing hand, the region processing sensation from his face had slowly taken over the hand’s territory. So touching Tom’s face produced sensation in his nonexistent fingers.

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If you are over 25, your brain is atrophying unless you are pushing it to its max.  Read this article to see several ways to keep your brain optimized.

We spend hours at the gym, eat right and go for our annual physicals and eye exams. But the most important organ in our bodies is often the most neglected, says cognitive fitness expert Rebecca Shafir.

Keeping the brain fit, she says, is critical for people’s long-term health.

“You have to use it or loose it,” Shafir, author of “The Zen of Listening,” says of the brain. “As brains age, there is atrophy just like muscles and it slows as it becomes more dormant.”

Shafir, a speech and language pathologist and neurotherapist at Harborside Counseling Services in Newburyport, provides brain fitness training for baby boomers over 50 and seniors who want to preserve and advance their cognitive skills. She also works with adolescents and adults with attention deficit disorder, head injury and stroke.

While physical activity is a good thing, Shafir says, brain exercises are important as well. By practicing a few simple exercises each day, she says people can stave off some of the effects of brain aging, improve their memory and be able to recall items more quickly and precisely.

Video games have been blamed for everything from causing aggression to giving you square eyes and a soft brain.

But what if video games are good for you?

Physio and occupational therapists started using simple video games in the late 1980s to treat people with a whole range of conditions from physical, learning or emotional disorders to cognitive problems following stroke and brain injury.

Today, a growing area of brain research suggests modern fast-paced action video games — in particular first-person shooter games — may sharpen your vision, improve your attention and working memory, and develop your fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

What’s more, these skills aren’t just virtual: they can help you do better in real-life situations, like driving your car or juggling more than one task at a time.

So what is it about blasting away your virtual enemies that’s so good for your head?

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Research since the 90s shows that individuals who lead mentally stimulating lives, through their education, their jobs, and also their hobbies, build a “Cognitive Reserve” in their brains. Stimulating the brain can literally generate new neurons and strengthen their connections which results in better brain performance and in having a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s symptoms.
As astounding as these insights may be, most Americans still devote more time to changing the oil, taking a car to a mechanic, or washing it, than thinking about how to maintain, if not improve, their brain performance. Not enough young and middle-aged people are benefiting from this emerging research, since it has been perceived as something “for seniors.” Granted, there are still many unknowns in the world of brain fitness and cognitive training. We need more research, better assessments and tools. But, this does not mean we cannot start caring for our brains today.
Inheritance has surprisingly little influence on longevity. James Vaupel, of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, in Rostock, Germany, notes that only 6 per cent of how long you’ll live, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ longevity; by contrast, up to 90 per cent of how tall you are, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ height. Even genetically identical twins vary widely in life span: the typical gap is more than fifteen years.
This is why brain maintenance is too important: to make sure our brains last as long as the rest of our bodies.

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