FRIDAY, March 7 (HealthDay News) -- Memory loss, where the brain deletes inconsequential information, is in a hyperactive state in people with Alzheimer's disease, a new study suggests.
Researchers at California's Buck Institute for Age Research analyzed human brain tissue and found that people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) showed more signs of cleavage of a molecule called amyloid precursor protein (APP) than people without the disease.
But when they analyzed the brains of younger people without Alzheimer's, the researchers were surprised to find that they had about 10 times as much APP cleavage as Alzheimer's patients. However, younger brains make memories faster than they lose them.
The Buck Institute team believes that the malfunction of a biochemical switch associated with APP cleavage causes the brains of Alzheimer's patients to get stuck in the process of deleting memories. They added that this suggests the disease affects the plasticity or malleability of the brain.
The study was published in the March 7 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
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courtesy of alzheimersideas
Saturday, March 8, 2008
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