Submission + - What Britney Spears Can Reveal About Alzheimer's
Hugh Pickens writes: "Time Magazine reports that researchers at the Cleveland Clinic report that they may have found a way to identify those most at risk of developing Alzheimer's long before symptoms develop — simply by asking them whether they recognize celebrities such as Britney Spears and Johnny Carson. It turns out that when people who are at highest risk of Alzheimer's try to recognize a famous name, their brains activate in very different ways from those of people who aren't at risk and scientists can actually see this difference using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. A team led by Stephen Rao, a brain-imaging specialist, found that those who were at the highest risk of developing Alzheimer's showed high levels of activity in the hippocampus, posterior cingulate and regions of the frontal cortex, all areas involved in memory. "This pushes the envelope further in attempting to detect dysfunction in the brain at a stage earlier than any detectable clinical measurement of cognitive decline," says Dr. Ralph Nixon. The idea is not necessarily to diagnose Alzheimer's earlier but to help identify those most vulnerable to cognitive decline so they can participate in clinical trials of new drugs designed to postpone or reduce symptoms. "If we can delay the onset of Alzheimer's by five years," says Rao, "by some estimates we can cut the incidence of Alzheimer's in half. If we can delay the disease by 10 years, we could almost eliminate it because people would die from other conditions first.""
