eLife: Brain "speedometers" help treat dementia

December 2, 2020 / --- nearly a million people in the UK suffer from dementia, the most common form of which is Alzheimer's disease.
people with Alzheimer's have difficulty exercising, which means they often get lost even in familiar environments.
, funded by the Alzheimer's Research Foundation at the University of Exeter School of Medicine, offers new ideas for this to happen.
the brain contains specialized nerve cells, called speed-sensitive cells, that change a person's discharge speed based on how fast they move.
these nerve cells, much like speedometers in a car, can calculate how far a person has come by recording how fast they have gone.
process can help us understand where we are relative to the past and navigate our environment.
in this study, Dr.com. Jon Brown led a team of scientists to study how these speed-sensing nerve cells in specific parts of the brain, called the inner olfactory cortical layer, are affected by Alzheimer's disease.
they studied it in mice with Alzheimer's disease.
team found that about 60 percent of nerve cells in normal mice were speed-sensitive, while the rate of speed-sensitive mice with disease characteristics was much lower (13 percent).
when this speedometer fails, the brain's map will not receive the correct distance information.
team believes the failure could disrupt other elements of our internal map, and found that other cells in mice that produce toxic tau proteins do not function. dr Jon Brown, who was in charge of the study, said:
People with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias may experience severe spatial memory impairments, which means they often get lost even in familiar environments.
need to understand so that we can treat this painful symptom.
"Our findings suggest that cells that function like "speedometers" that send information into the brain's neural map appear to fail in the dementia brain, which may help solve some of the problems.
be transformed into humans, it could find new ways for humans.
potential treatments.
" (Bioon.com) Source: Brain's 'speedometer' can help solve part of dementia puzzle Source: Thomas Ridler et al. Impaired speed encoding and grid cell periodicity in a mouse model of tauopathy, eLife (2020). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.59045。