CHARLOTTSVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have found what they believe is the physiological cause of Alzheimer’s patients forgetting family and friends, and a way to prevent it.
Dr. Harald Sontheimer, chair of UVA’s Department of Neuroscience and member of the UVA Brain Institute, along with graduate student Lata Chaunsali, said they found in the hippocampus protective “nets” that surround neurons in the brain while doing research on mice.
“Their role seems to be to stabilize contacts between nerve cells called synapses, and when they’re intact they seem to be holding these memories stable, ” Dr. Sontheimer said. “But in the Alzheimer’s-diseased mice we studied, they had lost this stabilizing coat on their surface.”…