Alzheimer's disease and the affects.

A few days ago several studies on Alzheimer's disease show

memories are first processed in the entorhinal cortex, which also is where Alzheimer's seems to begin its spread.

Evidence at the cellular level shows there are two causes for the onset of Alzheimer's. Starchy plaques crowd the space between brain cells. Tangles of tau proteins clomp together, sabotaging communication pathways.

For such important structure, little is known about the circuitry of the entorhinal cortex. What is known is that the activity levels of its neurons seem to predict whether something will be remembered or forgotten, for example the entorhinal cortex is the first area in the brain damaged by Alzheimer's. It is like a small fire set by an arsonist, the disease smolders here, then works upward through the centers of speech and language and spreads across the ceiling of the brain, moving into the visual cortex in the back, the motor cortex in the front, then into the most forward part, where cognition, judgment and reasoning reside.

Having dismantled the walls and floors of the brain's major lobes, Alzheimer's descends into the subcortex , finally attacking the brain stem and choking off the most basic processes of life, swallowing, breathing, blood pressure.

Recently, researchers identified abnormal tau protein in the entorhinal cortex before dementia was even clinically detectable. For years now most researchers targeted a different symptom, the amyloid beta plaques that gum up the spaces between the brain's neurons, causing them to die.

We are our memories, and almost everything we do is guided by the experiences we have had. All of our skills, our aspirations, our hopes, dreams, and imagination come out of our experiences and the accumulated benefit we have derived from them.

It is that very foundation, however, that turns tremulous for those with Alzheimer's.

All such memories are an amalgam of associations.

We are trying our best to find a cure and at the same time helping individuals who have Alzheimer's.

There are still no Cure on the market today for Alzheimer's disease...Dr. William Thomas


Mary Joseph Foundation
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