In a discovery that challenges conventional thinking, researchers report that several people over the age of 90 had excellent memory even though their brains showed signs that they had Alzheimer’s disease. The meaning of the findings isn’t entirely clear. The elderly people, whose brains were studied after their deaths, may have been in the early […]
Throughout our lives, our brains are always changing. To capture that transformation, scientists will scan the brains of people from kindergarten through their later years to build maps of the brain as it develops and changes over the decades.
Scientists have linked mutations in a single gene to autism in people who have a rare tumor syndrome typically diagnosed in childhood. The findings, in patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), may lead to a better understanding of the genetic roots of autism in the wider population.
![One February 25, 2015, Lori DeMoe McIntyre died of Alzheimer’s disease at age 56, after participating in DIAN research for nearly eight years. Her daughter Jessica McIntyre memorialized her mom with a large tattoo of Lori’s amyloid PIB PET scan. The younger McIntyre and one of her sisters participate in DIAN and DIAN-TU. [Courtesy of Jessica McIntyre, art by Joey Borger, Certified Customs, Denver, Colorado.]](https://neurology.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2022/06/image-17-300x210.png)
Part 1 of a five-part series. At age 8, DIAN has grown up. In 2008, when the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network formally began to study autosomal-dominant AD, the notion of assembling globally dispersed families afflicted with this rare form of AD into a standing research platform seemed radical to observers. In theory, the idea of […]
Investigators will accelerate drug testing, develop new diagnostic measures. Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has received a $4.3 million award from the Alzheimer’s Association to expand a major international clinical trial evaluating whether drugs can prevent Alzheimer’s disease in patients genetically predisposed to develop the devastating disease at a young age. The […]
New Alzheimer’s disease research details a technique that speedily measures levels in the brain of a damaging protein fragment, and insight into why mutations in a specific gene increase the risk of developing the disease. Both studies, from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, are available online in the Journal of […]
About 100 times rarer than Parkinson’s, and often mistaken for it, progressive supranuclear palsy afflicts fewer than 20,000 people in the U.S.—and two thirds do not even know they have it. Yet this little-known brain disorder that killed comic actor Dudley Moore in 2002 is quietly becoming a gateway for research that could lead to […]
Tau is better marker of progression to Alzheimer’s disease than amyloid beta A buildup of plaque and dysfunctional proteins in the brain are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. While much Alzheimer’s research has focused on accumulation of the protein amyloid beta, researchers have begun to pay closer attention to another protein, tau, long associated with this […]
Navigation skill test could diagnose brain changes long before memory fails Long before Alzheimer’s disease can be diagnosed clinically, increasing difficulties building cognitive maps of new surroundings may herald the eventual clinical onset of the disorder, finds new research from Washington University in St. Louis.“These findings suggest that navigational tasks designed to assess a cognitive […]
