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posted by Fnord666 on Monday March 05 2018, @09:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-were-we-discussing? dept.

In March 2015, Li-Huei Tsai set up a tiny disco for some of the mice in her laboratory. For an hour each day, she placed them in a box lit only by a flickering strobe. The mice — which had been engineered to produce plaques of the peptide amyloid-β in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — crawled about curiously. When Tsai later dissected them, those that had been to the mini dance parties had significantly lower levels of plaque than mice that had spent the same time in the dark.

Tsai, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, says she checked the result; then checked it again. “For the longest time, I didn’t believe it,” she says. Her team had managed to clear amyloid from part of the brain with a flickering light. The strobe was tuned to 40 hertz and was designed to manipulate the rodents’ brainwaves, triggering a host of biological effects that eliminated the plaque-forming proteins. Although promising findings in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease have been notoriously difficult to replicate in humans, the experiment offered some tantalizing possibilities. “The result was so mind-boggling and so robust, it took a while for the idea to sink in, but we knew we needed to work out a way of trying out the same thing in humans,” Tsai says.

Tsai’s study was the first glimpse of a cellular response to brainwave manipulation. “Her results were a really big surprise,” says Walter Koroshetz, director of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland. “It’s a novel observation that would be really interesting to pursue.”

[...] In addition to potentially leading to treatments, these studies could break open the field of neural oscillations in general, helping to link them more firmly to behaviour and how the brain works as a whole.

[...] Whatever their role, Tsai mostly wants to discipline brainwaves and harness them against disease. Cognito Therapeutics has just received approval for a second, larger trial, which will look at whether the therapy has any effect on Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Meanwhile, Tsai’s team is focusing on understanding more about the downstream biological effects and how to better target the hippocampus with non-invasive technologies.

For Tsai, the work is personal. Her grandmother, who raised her, was affected by dementia. “Her confused face made a deep imprint in my mind,” Tsai says. “This is the biggest challenge of our lifetime, and I will give it all I have.”

Pink noise.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Monday March 05 2018, @03:25PM

    by Rich (945) on Monday March 05 2018, @03:25PM (#647987) Journal

    I used to have an Apple IIgs with its works RGB monitor. The firmware could be set to 50 or 60 Hz for Euro or US frequencies. The flicker on 50 Hz was unbearable, much more so than with a TV. Maybe faster phosphors?! Anyway, despite being in Euroland, I set it to 60 Hz whenever possible. I don't want to imagine how bad my headaches would have become from 40 Hz. But great to know that the headache actually comes from rattling amyloid plaques, that rattle best at 40 Hz. Or so.

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