I just learned primate brains, very similar to humans brains don't get Alzheimers.

LINK

WEDNESDAY, May 27 (HealthDay News) -- New British research provides more evidence that the bits of gunk in the brain known as plaques and tangles don't necessarily lead to Alzheimer's disease, as many experts have long believed.

In fact, the study found that many people over the age of 75 had signs of significant clogging in their brains but still managed to avoid senility.

Psychiatric diagnosis is based on self-disclosure.

One really has to talk to the patient to know what is going on. If these guys can talk to mice there is money to be made.

If these docs have an agent? Wow. Folks would pay good money to see this.

I could fill Madison Square Garden, the Meadowlands even at $50 a head! Think VEGAS!

My agents fees alone would put me into the high income bracket.

If anyone has a phone number, please pass it along
by a private email.

Vince

I put the wrong link in
LINK

MONDAY, May 25 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists have long noticed a curious phenomenon among primates: Humans get the devastating neurological disorder known as Alzheimer's disease, but their closest evolutionary cousins don't.

Even more inexplicable is the fact that chimpanzee and other non-human primate brains do get clogged with the same protein plaques that are believed by many to cause the disease in humans.

I'm willing to buy into the theory that biology affects depression and depression affects biology. Let's remember, folks, our bodies are one elaborate feedback mechanism and it goes two ways and is never static. I'm even willing to admit that neurons dying in one part of the brain might be the result of depression -- it doesn't mean it's irreversible by natural processes. I am not willing to admit that drugs causing neuronal growth means anything good at all. The chances of this being natural, healthy neuronal growth are zip given what we know about the toxicity of psych drugs. It's some catastrophic reaction to toxic assault is my theory.

Some years ago I coined Carroll's Dictum:

The Model is not the Disease.

None of the cardinal symptoms or signs of human depression is mediated by the hippocampus.

If this interesting basic behavioral neuroscience research generates "translational" benefit most likely it will be serendipitous. Remember John Cade in the 1940s -- he was testing an erroneous model of mania and he accidentally stumbled on lithium, which has stood the test of time in therapeutics. He was one of my teachers and I always credit him with having had the wit to recognize what he saw.

Strange. I thought that increasing the hippocampus was a side effect of antidepressants that was discovered after it's use.
I wrote a post about chemical and behavioral increase of the hippocampus.
http://justana-justana.blogspot.com/2009/04/increase-of-hippocampus-chemical-versus.html

"Furthermore SSRIs have been used in the treatment of PTSD. One study found that after a year of SSRI treatments, subjects with PTSD had a 5% increase in hippocampal volume and a 35% increase in memory function (Bremner, 2006)*. Together, these findings indicate a variety of reasons why SSRIs may be beneficial for offenders with multiple paraphilias." p. 547 (emphasis mine)

There is a study by Eleonor Maguire, et all, that has studied London cab-drivers that have been submitted to "The Knowledge", a rigorous test where they must learn a large number of places and the most direct routes between them, and succeeded.
After comparing them to those who have not studied for this text it was found that London taxi-driver s's hippocampi have increased.

I believe that the behavioral way is far more better.
I've just remembered that people with Alzheimer who plays an instrument don't lose their musical memory like the other memories.
Perhaps there are other ways of dealing with it.
The brain, the brain... this not known organ.

I love mouse models of mental illness. Especially schizophrenia. How does a mouse know when he or she is being hounded by the CIA or FBI? Or hears voices or sees dead people?