Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Getting the rhythm to suppress Alzheimer's

An interesting brief open source review by Lynne Peeples in PNAS describes experiments on mice and humans showing that visual and sound stimulation in the e.e.g gamma frequency range (30-80 Hertz, or cycles/sec, peaking at 40 Hz) elicits gamma frequency brain oscillation, enhance cognition, and diminishes levels of the amyloid plaques and tau protein tangles associated with Alzheismer's. The article is worth a read, and I pass on just a bit of a background paragraph:
Brain rhythms are known to participate in all forms of cognition. And changes of brain rhythms appear to be implicated in all forms of neurological disease...Growing evidence indicates that neurons in many animals, including humans, can strongly synchronize in the gamma range of frequencies—between 30 and 80 hertz, and peaking around 40 hertz. As far back as a 1955 study of meditating yogis, researchers have associated gamma waves with peak concentration and high levels of cognitive functioning. Studies in the last decade that manipulated brain rhythms in lab animals and humans have confirmed the impact of those rhythms on cognition and disease. Researchers have also found that fewer neurons fire together at this rate in patients with Alzheimer’s disease or other neurological conditions, suggesting that gamma rhythms may play a role in the cognitive impairments associated with such disorders.

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