Cognitive Labs

Not Thebes or Memphis, but a mausoleum at Stanford

Cognitive Labs jumped to 548,000 visitors last month (july) an all-time high. To our knowledge, this makes us the largest brain training network. This is reflected in the charts on brain.com and our affiliates page. In case you're wondering, which you probably aren't, cognitivelabs.com has more traffic than brain.com by a significant margin, though brain.com is growing fast. In addition, we're on a host of partnering sites. So far, we've been in stealth mode like an F-22 raptor.

Dr. Ashford gave a well-regarded talk to 100+ Stanford alumni yesterday in Palo Alto on the issue of early Alzheimer's detection. The whole focus of the 'industry' is moving towards early identification - not just mild cognitive impairment but actually pre-impairment. This ties in well with other problems like aging. There is a growing realization that treating symptoms or cases where amyloid and tau proteins are already in place is not going to be the ultimate solution because by that point, irrevocable damage has occurred.

Detection and prevention needs to be earlier, simultaneously with concern for cardiopulmonary fitness, which should be in the 30's onward and really a lifelong practice.

Labels: 548000, amyloid, ashford, mausoleum, preDementia, Tau

Naturally, the implication of the preceding story is that enzyme therapy might be only a half measure, since it shortens lifespan in laboratory research, until the cause of this accelerated aging, a kind of methusaleh syndrome, is isolated...

Labels: amyloid, methuslaleh, neprilysin, tree

WASHINGTON (AP) — Researchers have uncovered a new clue to the cause of Alzheimer's disease. The brains of people with the memory-robbing form of dementia are cluttered with a plaque made up of beta-amyloid, a sticky protein. But there long has been a question whether this is a cause of the disease or a side effect. Also involved are tangles of a protein called tau; some scientists suspect this is the cause.

Now, researchers have caused Alzheimer's symptoms in rats by injecting them with one particular form of beta-amyloid. Injections with other forms of beta-amyloid did not cause illness, which may explain why some people have beta-amyloid plaque in their brains but do not show disease symptoms.

Full story on Google News

On Nature Medicine

Labels: alzheimers, amyloid, harvard, rats, selkoe, shankar, Tau