15. "Stopping Alzheimer's"

Summary: By pursuing the idea of injecting antibodies into Alzheimer's patients in order to attack amyloids that cause issues, it's possible that if these vaccines are administered early enough in the disease, the antibodies can attack the disease and prevent it.

Key Facts:

"Now, scientists working with mice report that antibodies tailor-made to attack amyloid can wipe it out and reverse an experimental version of Alzeimer's disease if the intervention begins early enough."

"The course of events suggest that there is an ongoing cycle of manufacture and disposal of amyloid in the brain, and that this cycle becomes imbalanced in Alzheimer's patients."

"Even so, the vaccination might have had some benefit. Swiss researchers reported at an Alzheimer's meeting in Philadelphia in July that some patients who had been given the vaccine developed high antibody concentrations. Two years after receiving injections, these people showed less cognitive decline than did patients who had received inert injections."

Seppa, Nathan. "Stopping Alzheimer's." JSTOR. Society for Science & the Public, 7 Aug.
2004. Web. 31 Jan. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4015559>.

12. "Detecting Alzheimer's Disease"

Summary: Through tests of pupil dilation and cornea behavior, the authors were able to use data analysis to discover those who were probable to have Alzheimer's disease and/or dementia. By using measurements of pupils and range of motion, pupillary responses show notable differences and predict the sicknesses.

Key Facts:
"Even if the reported difference between patients with AD and normal subjects proves to be a result of non-pharmacological factors, it may still represent a potentially valuable diagnostic tool."
"Several letters suggest that our finding may have been a result of an increased permeability of the cornea in patients with probable AD. We agree that a change in permeability is one possible
mechanism."

Marx, Jeffrey, Sanjiv Kumar, Allen Thach, Tien Kiat-Winarko, Donald Frambach,
Adrian Treloar, Mandy Assin, Alastair Macdonald, Barrett Katz, Nunzio Pomara, Natraj Sitaram, L. Scinto, K. Daffner, D. Dressler, B. Ransil, D. Rentz, S. Weintraub, M. Mesulam, and H. Potter. "Detecting Alzheimer's Disease." JSTOR. American Association for the Advancement of Science, 17 Mar. 1995. Web. 31 Jan. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2886714>.

3. "Memory Implants"

Summary: Author John Cohen talks about how Theodore Berger is in the process of developing a technology that will be able to trigger people's memories into remembering the long-term. By inserting this piece into the brain, it works with the neutrons in order to process information to generate memories. A highly scientific article, Cohen goes in depth with Berger's experiments. For example, they used a monkey to perform a specific task, drugged the monkey with cocaine (eliminating that memory and the same part of his brain), and then used the technology to revive his memory of the past task just taught. This is still highly a work in progress and Berger is collaborating with associates at USC.

Key Facts:
"A day in the not too distant future when a patient with severe memory loss can get help from an electronic implant."
"Berger has designed silicon chips to mimic the signal processing that those neurons do when they’re functioning properly—the work that allows us to recall experiences and knowledge for more than a minute."
"We’re not putting individual memories back into the brain," he says. "We’re putting in the capacity to generate memories."
"Cochlear implants now help more than 200,000 deaf people hear by converting sound into electrical signals and sending them to the auditory nerve."
"Berger has developed mathematical theorems that describe how electrical signals move through the neurons of the hippocampus to form a long-term memory, and he has proved that his equations match reality."

Cohen, Jon. "Memory Implants." Technology Review. 23 Apr. 2013. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513681/memory-implants>.