In the United States, women make up nearly two-thirds of all diagnosed cases of Alzheimer’s disease. On average, women live about 5 years longer than men, but that life expectancy discrepancy doesn’t likely account for such a large, sex-skewed prevalence … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs
Tag Archives: Alzheimer’s disease
Study finds clues to Alzheimer’s disease onset in the aging female brain
The hippocampus has brief but critical role in early task learning
How the brain learns new tasks is among the biggest and oldest questions in neuroscience. A recent study in Nature Neuroscience offers a new, potentially key part of the answer: the dorsal hippocampus is involved in the earliest stages of … Continue reading
Journal Club: Simple model reproduces patterns of toxic protein buildup across multiple neurodegenerative diseases
Fatal neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) begin as tiny pockets of misfolded proteins that evade the body’s normal detritus-removal systems. They spread throughout the brain and clog neural pathways. But exactly how these proteins propagate … Continue reading
Journal Club: Microglial protein trafficking could play a role in neurodegenerative disorders
Neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or Parkinson’s are associated with a build-up of insoluble, toxic forms of proteins such as amyloid or tau in the brain. Normally, intracellular protein complexes known as retromers help with recycling and trafficking … Continue reading
Journal Club: New roles found for protein key to neurotransmission
Scientists know many of the proteins that make neurotransmission possible, but they don’t have a handle on how all the pieces work together. “As someone who has studied the synapse for a long time, I still find it frustrating … Continue reading
Journal Club: ATP could help proteins dissolve in cells, prompting a rethink about its function and evolution
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is widely considered biology’s “energy currency”. A crucial player in cell function, it stores and releases energy for enzymatic reactions in its phosphate bonds. But cells typically hoard amounts of ATP several hundred-fold higher than that needed … Continue reading