Rush Researchers Develop New Measure Of Brain Health Cognitive clock may enable assessment of risk for memory and thinking problems
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CHICAGO, June 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ How old is your brain compared to your chronological age? A new measure of brain health developed by researchers at Rush University Medical Center may offer a novel approach to identifying individuals at risk of memory and thinking problems, according to research results published in
Alzheimer s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer s Association on June 1.
Dubbed the cognitive clock by the researchers, the tool is a measure of brain health based on cognitive performance. It may be used in the future to predict the likelihood of memory and thinking problems that develop as a person ages.
Sandy Hausman reports
“The first thing we do is a regular MRI, which just looks at the structure of the brain to see, ‘Is there a lot of atrophy or brain shrinkage? Is there a lesion in the brain that would be the reason that the person is having cognitive decline.”
And they can look for fragments of protein in the brain called amyloid.
“There are certain PET scans where we can look at the amount of amyloid in the brain, and that is a marker of Alzheimer’s Disease,” Manning says.
Sometimes the findings suggest typical, age-related changes.
“Normal age related decline includes things like forgetting names very, very common. Proper nouns – common to have a harder time with that.” Manning explains.
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Discovery Labs Signs Foundational Lease with University of Pennsylvania Gene Therapy Program as Anchor Tenant
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa., (May , 2021) – The Discovery Labs has signed a foundational lease with the University of Pennsylvania Gene Therapy Program (GTP), which will use Discovery Labs’ suburban campus for a portion of its expanding research operations focused on the development of genetic medicines for rare and orphan diseases, as well as acquired and pandemic infectious diseases, such as COVID-19.
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(Boston) Since 2008, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and VA Boston Healthcare System have studied Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive brain disease associated with repetitive head impacts that has been diagnosed after death in the brains of American football players and other contact sport athletes as well as members of the armed services. Clinically, impulsivity, explosivity, depression, memory impairment and executive dysfunction have been reported to occur in the disease.
While many of the scientific studies to date have focused on repetitive head trauma leading to the development of abnormal tau, a new study provides insights into white matter changes that may offer new targets for therapies.