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Flickering Lights May Illuminate A Path To Alzheimer's Treatment (latimes.com)
Slashdot reader rpavlicek writes, "Research done by MIT late this year has shown that light signals can improve the brain's neuron gamma frequency which can reverse the effects of Alzheimer's disease (by removing brain plaque). Beneficial effects were found in both intercranial and optical stimuli." The Los Angeles Times reports:
New research demonstrates that, in mice whose brains are under attack by Alzheimer's dementia, exposure to lights that flicker at a precise frequency can right the brain's faulty signaling and energize its immune cells to fight off the disease... In mice, these effects were limited to the visual cortex. In humans with Alzheimer's, that's not one of the brain regions that gets gummed up early or significantly by amyloid plaques. But the authors of the new research held out hope that the light therapy might induce gamma oscillations, or their immune-boosting effect, more broadly in human brains, or that some change in delivery of the light might extend its effects to brain regions, such as the hippocampus, that are profoundly affected by Alzheimer's.
A startup has already approached the FDA seeking clinical trials, and the L.A. Times adds that "Even if the new research does not yield a treatment for Alzheimer's, it is expected to deepen understanding of a key player in the disease -- the brain's dedicated immune system -- and point to ways it can be used to fight the disease."
A startup has already approached the FDA seeking clinical trials, and the L.A. Times adds that "Even if the new research does not yield a treatment for Alzheimer's, it is expected to deepen understanding of a key player in the disease -- the brain's dedicated immune system -- and point to ways it can be used to fight the disease."
They hold out great promise, and it doesn't really hurt to try. But I wouldn't get my hopes up too much.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How many light are there? Does this mean Gul Madred was a futuristic neurologist?
Time to feed the old timers some bath salts, ecstasy and bust out the xenon strobe lights and lasers and turns the lights out. LOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So a precisely tuned flicker-frequency (40Hz in mice) does great things for brain function and maintenance -- so what deleterious effects do things like CRT monitors, mains-powered fluro/LED lighting etc have on our brains -- given that they're operating "out of sync" with our gamma waves?
Could it be that the increase in dementia/Alzheimer's is related to our exposure to such off-frequency flickering on a very wide scale, thanks to modern technology?
Telling an elderly person to "move towards the light" might set off panic.
#DeleteChrome
A cheap UPS from the junkyard will do the job well with it's small charge current designed for 7Ah batteries, add a timer and a small incandescent lamp as load and it will do charge/discharge automatically (you'll probably want to disable the buzzer).
A small 30w 12v solar panel connected with a diode to the battery is an even nice alternative if you don't want to waste power on such attempts.
So to us troglodytes a flickering camp fire is beneficial. Got to go camping more.
Please! Looks like they are fairly cheap to set up. I'm not inclined to build one, but would love to buy one for my elderly father, and would be happy to pay a 100% markup on components.
This will likely lead to the collapse of the Alzheimer's market, currently estimated at between $3 billion with a potential for $20 billion. There is no foreseeable way to profitably monetize therapies based on flashing lights.
Your partners in good health,
Giant Pharma
I thought this was a post about the NVidia update process?
http://saveie6.com/
And this setup of your generates the light at the proper frequency and holds it there consistency without variation?
1) What junkyard has UPSes in it?
2) it's means it is.
Unfortunately, a podcast I listened to recently, possibly Radiolab, also added that when moving Alzheimers therapies from mice to humans, there is a 99.6% failure rate.
I once complimented a woman for her Christmas brooch, which had tiny, multicolored, rapidly flickering LEDs on it. "I use it at work," she said, when she has to feed Alzheimer's patients. They fixate on the flickering brooch, she explained, which gives them the calming and the concentration needed to accept her spoonfeeding.
I hope other caregivers experiment with LEDs.
I thought the brains only happened to sync at 40Hz, but they could sync at other speeds - so it's not like a faster/slower rate is "out of sync" with any natural rhythm, just that your brain cells may sync to whatever speed incoming light is regularly oscillating at, or perhaps particular frequencies.
It could mean that all of the staring so many of us do at LCD monitors is actually *helpful*, a preventative measure for ALS! Or perhaps with some slight modulation it could be so. I'm already running my (LCD) monitor at 50Hz, I'd honestly be fine at 40...
It also makes me wonder if particular refresh rates would be confusing to learning since the same effect takes place when learning new concepts.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Radiolab broke the story with their http://www.radiolab.org/story/...">Bringing Gamma Back episode. The remarkable thing about this research is that they focused on the lack of gamma wave activity in those suffering from Alzheimers. This has been observed in both the brains of mice and humans.
If human brains cannot have gamma waves induced with LEDs like mice, I am sure there are many different options for inducing gamma. However, the fact that mice and human brains both have gamma wave patterns and both lack this brain pattern when suffering Alzheimers seems to bode well for the possibility that inducing gamma in human brains will also trigger the brain's self cleaning processes like it did in mice.
Most research involving mice involves chemical reactions that can be nuanced enough to not apply to humans. However, this specific research seems to be based on the fundamental functionality of the brain which is more likely to be common across various mammals.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
That's great to hear, as some of my cognitive functions are failing enough that I can notice the difference (mostly loosing words - what I call loss in my memory-map: I'll be in a conversation & suddenly stop-dead verbally, as the word &/or phrase that should've come-out & the conversation continue to flow, drops whatever the next word/phrase would be & there's only a blank & reaching for what should be there, either produces nothing at all, or produces a word/phrase that I instinctively know is wrong, but that's all that shows-up...). This is happening on a rising-scale & it is separate from forgetting something: I came into the room to do something, but what? At 66 this may be more than 'old-timers', or not. The flickering lights won't do me any good, as I'm a 'former' eplieptic ('bout 40 yrs ago & long since no longer required Dilantin, etc.), but flickering/strobing lights can still affect me. Dammed if I do & dammed if I don't. Missed the bus again :-\ Hope this new idea/approach can help others, though.
How about delivery via the other senses? Eg Binaural Beats? Get on YouTube, there's plenty of Gamma frequencies to experiment with.