Alzheimers-research

New $30M venture philanthropy fund aims at revolutionizing the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease

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Why diag­nos­ing Alzheimer’s today is so difficult—and how we can do bet­ter (Bill Gates):

“Alzheimer’s research is a fron­tier where we can dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve human life—both the lives of peo­ple who have the dis­ease and their loved ones. I’m opti­mistic that we can sub­stan­tial­ly alter the course of Alzheimer’s if we make progress in sev­er­al key areas. One of the biggest things we could do right now is devel­op a reli­able, afford­able, and acces­si­ble diag­nos­tic. [Read more…] about New $30M ven­ture phil­an­thropy fund aims at rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the diag­no­sis of Alzheimer’s Disease

Kirtan Kriya Meditation: A “new” tool to fight Alzheimer’s Disease

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Enjoy this slide deck pre­sent­ed by Dr. Dhar­ma Singh Khal­sa,  Pres­i­dent of the Alzheimer’s Research & Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF),  at the 2013 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit.

To learn more:

What are scal­able best prac­tices to spread smart health?

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You can now enjoy the slide deck from this ses­sion, which took place at the 2013 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Sep­tem­ber 19–20th). [Read more…] about What are scal­able best prac­tices to spread smart health?

The Future of Preventive Brain Medicine: Breaking Down the Cognition & Alzheimer’s Disease Alphabet Soup

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As the pres­i­dent and med­ical direc­tor of the Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF), it’s my job to stay on top of advances in the field of Alzheimer’s research. Recent­ly, a num­ber of arti­cles in the med­ical lit­er­a­ture have caught my atten­tion. They are focused on a par­tic­u­lar ques­tion that con­cerns most Baby Boomers like me: “Is mem­o­ry loss just a nor­mal part of aging?” [Read more…] about The Future of Pre­ven­tive Brain Med­i­cine: Break­ing Down the Cog­ni­tion & Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Alpha­bet Soup

Tracking decline in the brain from the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s

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Inter­est­ing arti­cle on The Dana Foun­da­tion web­site on how to mon­i­tor cog­ni­tive decline in the brain in the very ear­ly stages of Alzheimer’s: Func­tion­al MRI May Be Use­ful for Mon­i­tor­ing Cog­ni­tive Decline in the Elder­ly (Dana Foundation)

Alzheimer’s researchers have long want­ed to find bet­ter ways not only to diag­nose the dis­ease but also to mon­i­tor its pro­gres­sion from the ear­li­est stages.

A new study sug­gests that func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI), a tech­nique cur­rent­ly used main­ly for neu­ro­science research or to guide brain surgery, could be use­ful in this clin­i­cal role.

[…] an ele­gant and thought-pro­vok­ing study.

Pooling data to accelerate Alzheimer’s research

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Very inter­est­ing arti­cle in the New York Times on the rea­sons behind grow­ing research of how to detect Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: Rare Shar­ing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s (New York Times) 

(Sit­u­a­tion before) Sci­en­tists were look­ing for bio­mark­ers, but they were not get­ting very far. “The prob­lem in the field was that you had many dif­fer­ent sci­en­tists in many dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties doing their own research with their own patients and with their own meth­ods,” said Dr. Michael W. Wein­er of the San Fran­cis­co Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs, who directs ADNI. “Dif­fer­ent peo­ple using dif­fer­ent meth­ods on dif­fer­ent sub­jects in dif­fer­ent places were get­ting dif­fer­ent results, which is not sur­pris­ing. What was need­ed was to get every­one togeth­er and to get a com­mon data set.”

(Sit­u­a­tion now) Com­pa­nies as well as aca­d­e­m­ic researchers are using the data. There have been more than 3,200 down­loads of the entire mas­sive data set and almost a mil­lion down­loads of the data sets con­tain­ing images from brain scans.

Com­ment: as dis­cussed in our recent mar­ket report, we’ll prob­a­bly see soon­er rather than lat­er a com­pa­ra­ble effort aimed at find­ing the bio­log­i­cal and or cog­ni­tive mark­ers for the Cog­ni­tive Reserve, the emerg­ing cor­ner­stone for a life­long men­tal well­ness (vs. a dis­ease-spe­cif­ic) approach. For more on the need to stan­dard­ize data and care, read inter­view with Patrick Dono­hue on Rein­vent­ing Brain Care through Pol­i­cy, Stan­dards, Tech­nol­o­gy. For more on the Cog­ni­tive Reserve, read inter­view with Dr. Yaakov Stern.