memory

Eating saturated fat is bad for the brain

dr. dolittle — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 18:05:25 +0000

Eating saturated fat is bad for the brain

I know this is not a comparative physiology topic, but this article caught my attention as I know I just ate a rather high fat meal last week for Thanksgiving and I plan to do the same throughout the holiday season.

Insulin does more than just lowering blood sugar by increasing its uptake into tissues. It can also increase blood flow to the hippocampal region of the brain to help cognitive function. This area of the brain is important in memory formation and spatial orientation. A new study published in the American Journal of Physiology - Endocrinology and Metabolism used ultrasound to measure blood flow to this region of the brain in rats fed either a normal fat or high fat diet for 6 months. Their results show that eating a high fat diet over a long period of time causes blood vessels in the brain to lose their ability to respond to insulin, meaning blood flow to the region is reduced. Because this area is so important in our ability to recall information, the researchers speculate that insulin resistance in the brain of people who are obese or diabetic may help explain why they experience cognitive impairments or even dementia.

Source:

Z Fu, J Wu, T Nesil, MD Li, KW Aylor, Z Liu. Long-term high-fat diet induces hippocampal microvascular insulin resistance and cognitive dysfunction. Articles in PresS. American Journal of Physiology - Endocrinology and Metabolism (November 29, 2016). doi:10.1152/ajpendo.00297.2016

dr. dolittle Wed, 11/30/2016 - 13:05

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Life Science

dementia

diabetes

diet

There seems to be an emerging consensus that the active transport of glucose to the brain diminishes with aging, whereas the route for ketone bodies-the other fuel-does not. So coconut oil, a source of medium chain triglycerides (and a saturated fat!) which quickly convert into ketone bodies is being advocated for brain health and function, including avoiding Alzheimer's. What do you think of this?

If you read the literature collected from cardiovascular disease research, you will find that any saturated fatty acid smaller than Myristic Acid (C:14) will raise serum cholesterol. You might also like to know, but it sounds as if you already do, that short chain saturated fats go straight to the liver while the longer chain saturated fats go into the serum as in lipoproteins.

So I would exonerate coconut oil, but little else. The fatty acid composition of coconut oil is somewhat unique.

When I looked up insulin resistance, I found two culprits: a high-fat diet, and a diet high in heme iron. Heme iron absorption is poorly regulated and is speculated to play a role.

But frankly, the evidence that a high-fat diet leads to insulin resistance is overwhelming.

Can't win! I find that a high fat diet is the only thing that allows me to win the battle with obesity (I have other health issues which prohibit any significant exercise). Strangely, high fat/few carbs cuts hunger attacks enough that I can average fewer calories in than out, and thus slowly but steadily lose weight. It's not the healthiest diet, but 50# of extra fat wasn't healthy either. Sounds like this diet has at least one more disadvantage than I knew of.

Fat and sugar must never be consumed in the same meal. Sugar will spike your insulin. The same also happens when you consume too much refined carbohydrates.

Basic chemistry might keep brain cells healthy

jhalper — Wed, 27 May 2015 04:34:38 +0000

Basic chemistry might keep brain cells healthy

“Inclusion bodies – those clumps of protein that are found in the brain cells of Alzheimer’s patients – are, sadly, a product of aging,” says Dr. Maya Schuldiner. “They can form naturally in practically all cells, but when these cells get old, the mechanism for clearing them away starts to fail.”

That is not great news for those of us who are already seeing signs of incipient dementia every time we forget a name or misplace our keys. But of course there is good news too. Schuldiner has discovered a “detergent” that cells make to wash away those nasty protein clumps. And she believes that, in the future, this detergent could provide the basis of drugs to treat neurodegenerative diseases, among them Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

We put the word “detergent” in quote marks, but the truth is that the basic chemistry is pretty much the same as that of laundry soap: The two-part molecules have a fatty, water-repelling end and a water-loving end. The fatty end can attach to molecules of grease or protein; the water-loving ends latch on to the nearest water molecules to whisk the “dirt” away. In scientific terms, the proteins in the inclusion body become soluble.

"Laundry soap" in human cells: The Inclusion bodies are in red, lipid droplets in green

Schuldiner and her team realized this detergent was being produced when they saw lipid droplets – “little lard balls,” in Schuldiner’s words – tethered to the inclusion bodies they were investigating in yeast cells. These little lard balls turn out to be a bit more complex than they look. They produce a special kind of fat that is similar to a sterol (related to cholesterol) – when and only when there is an inclusion body in the cell. This sterol is what forms the detergent.

She says that she and her team were amazed to find evidence of detergents inside a cell. Since detergent molecules are basically indiscriminate in their actions – capable of clearing away all sorts of proteins and fats – the cell would need to produce them carefully and deliberately in place. Hence the physical tethering.

Her lab mostly works with yeast cells, which have, says Schuldiner, “the same inclusion body issues as human cells. They contain a protein that is nearly identical to the human one for tethering the lipid droplets. And, like the human ones, they suck at the removal process once they get old.” The group did repeat their experiments on human cells in lab dishes, finding similar results to their yeast cell studies. And Schuldiner points out that other studies have noted the lipid droplets around inclusions in the nerve cells of Alzheimer’s patients, but mostly ignored the deceptive little “lard balls.”

What gives her hope for treatment is that the detergent production is really “basic chemistry.” Clearly any potential drugs based on her group’s findings are, for now, in the speculation stage, but we can all hope for rapid advances in this area.

jhalper Wed, 05/27/2015 - 00:34

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Ask The Experts: Epilepsy medication used to treat Alzheimer's

dr. dolittle — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 12:43:28 +0000

Ask The Experts: Epilepsy medication used to treat Alzheimer's

I recently received the following question from a reader based on a prior blog entry on how a medication used to treat epilepsy also helps reverse memory loss with Alzheimer's disease. You can see the original blog here

Question:

"I find it a little confusing as to how it is possible that this medication can improve brain and memory function but at the same time cause cognitive impairment? Is that not contradictory that the meds are suppose o help the brain but the side effects are related to the brain? Did the research account the facts that humans do not share all the same proteins as mice. For example the apoE4 gene in humans is not found in mice. It is this gene that is responsible for the degeneration in Alzheimer’s patients. Was this gene taken into account when conducting the experiment?"

To answer this question, I contacted study author Dr. Lennart Mucke, MD, Director of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and Professor of Neurology at University of California, San Francisco.

Here is his response:

Dr. Lennart Mucke, Director of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease (Photo credit: Chris Goodfellow)

"Most drugs have a “therapeutic window” within which they help and outside of which they can impair the organ or system they target. Think of heart medicines, drugs for high blood pressure, and insulin. In some people, the therapeutic window can be shifted or narrower, compared to others, based on genetic factors. In most people, though, levetiracetam is well tolerated, particularly at the low doses we found to be efficacious in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. Notably, similar blood levels of the drugs also had positive effects on brain function in people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment in a clinical trial carried out by Dr. Michela Gallagher and her coworkers at Johns Hopkins (Bakker et al. Neuron (2012)). As far as apoE4 is concerned, the mice we studied did not have it. Although apoE4 increases the risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease, the disease clearly occurs also in human non-carriers, i.e., in the absence of this risk gene.

Best wishes,

Lennart Mucke"

For more information about the causes of Alzheimer's disease, check out this YouTube video featuring Dr. Mucke:

Original article:

Sanchez PE, Zhua L, Verreta L, Vossela KA, Orra AG, Cirritoc JR, Devidzea N, Ho K, Yua G-Q, Palopa JJ, and Mucke L. Levetiracetam suppresses neuronal network dysfunction and reverses synaptic and cognitive deficits in an Alzheimer’s disease model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Epub ahead of print. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1121081109

dr. dolittle Wed, 11/19/2014 - 07:43

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University of California

Thanks for facilitating this interesting discussion, Dr. D!

Sir,
my child is 8 years old. his eeg diagnous Epilepsy.my child after every one or two hour fitiks four of five minuts after fitics some deep sleep. my child is not talking.please advice me about my child. I am Worried about my child. i am witing for your positive response.

Sleep Learning with Smell Could Reduce Addiction

jhalper — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 05:11:09 +0000

Sleep Learning with Smell Could Reduce Addiction

Get rid of your addictions while you sleep? Weizmann Institute researcher Dr. Anat Arzi is not promising this yet, but she and Prof. Noam Sobel have shown that changing bad habits through sleep conditioning could someday be possible. After just one session in the Neurobiology Department’s sleep lab, volunteers reported smoking on average 30% fewer cigarettes over the course of a week.

Volunteers given the same conditioning while awake did not reduce their nicotine consumption.

Arzi and Sobel had first demonstrated true sleep learning in 2012. This is the same conditioning that Pavlov discovered when he trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell: Teach the mind to subconsciously associate one sensation with another. Their twist was to use smell instead of the bell: We can register and even react to odors while we sleep without waking up. So when the volunteers were exposed throughout the night to the smell of cigarette smoke together with that of rotten fish, they did not remember it in the morning. And yet their need for a “ciggie” was not as strong as it had been.

Arzi and Sobel

The second trick was to monitor the sleepers’ brain waves and administer the smells at the right stage of sleep. The group’s previous research had suggested that the associations are formed and cemented in the brain during non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep – the stage in which researchers believe that memories from the previous day are being consolidated. The new study supported this finding quite strongly.

Arzi assiduously points out that the research has proven a point about the workings of the sleeping brain. She will be pleased, of course, if clinical researchers adopt the method and improve on it. She, herself, intends to use this window on the brain’s activity to keep investigating the mysterious phenomena of sleep and learning, and the apparently unique place of smell among our senses.

jhalper Wed, 11/12/2014 - 00:11

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Implications for a hippocampal role in promoting obesity

dr. dolittle — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 22:26:57 +0000

Implications for a hippocampal role in promoting obesity

A recent article published in the American Journal of Physiology reviewed how the brain regulates feeding behaviors. Humans are not the only species to eat food in spurts we like to call meals. Research suggests that this behavior may actually aid survival as it reduces exposure time to the environment and makes responding to fluctuations in the availability of food a bit easier to deal with. Dr. Marise Parent and colleagues at Georgia State University wanted to find out how your body determines when to initiate eating as well as how long the interval between meals should be.

Factors that contribute to when we begin eating include our own biological clock (I know mine is very regular when it comes to eating) and hormonal cues. Just like Pavlov's dogs, rats who are fed on a constant schedule, begin to anticipate the next meal resulting in changes of several hormones that regulate feeding and serve to prepare the stomach for the incoming meal. These types of associations can even overcome the feeling of satiety, which is one reason we may overeat. This is a form of associative learning.

Dr. Parent and colleagues believe that this ability to override other signals lies within the hippocampus, the region of your brain that is associated with forming autobiographical memories such as where you spent last Thanksgiving, what you ate for dinner that night, when you ate it, etc. In fact, the hippocampus can receive nerve signals providing information about food stimuli from other parts of the brain that process signals about taste and hunger as well as information from the digestive tract. It also has receptors that can respond to several hormones related to feeding behaviors. In addition, the hippocampus can send signals to other areas of the brain that regulate the intake of energy, such as the hypothalamus. This makes it a relay station of sorts uniquely situated to control feeding behaviors like meal onset.

Lesions (i.e. injuries) of the hippocampus result in overeating, weight gain, and loss of the ability to differentiate between feeling full or hungry. Studies like these referenced to in the article suggest that the hippocampus may be important in diet-induced obesity as well as sustained obesity that can promote impaired memory formation. The authors speculate that energy dense foods and stress can impact the hippocampus and normal memory formation leading to shorter intervals between meals as well as increasing the frequency of meals and their size, which further damages the hippocampus causing a vicious cycle to develop as shown in figure 6 from their review article below.

Source:

Parent MB, Darling JN, Henderson YO. Remembering to eat: hippocampal regulation of meal onset. American Journal of Physiology. 306: R701-R713, 2014.

dr. dolittle Thu, 07/10/2014 - 18:26

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Apparently worms have even better memories than dolphins!

dr. dolittle — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 16:31:28 +0000

Apparently worms have even better memories than dolphins!

Figure from Journal of Experimental Biology.

Researchers Tal Shomrat and Michael Levin at Tufts University have found that planaria worms are able to quickly relearn lost skills after literally losing their heads. The researchers trained the worms to find food in an environment with bright light and open space, both considered uncomfortable to the creatures. The time it took for worms to adjust to the environment and find food was recorded. Then, the researchers severed their heads and waited for the head and brain to regenerate (see image above). What they discovered was that the worms with regenerated heads were able to find the food faster than novice worms after being reminded only once of how to find it. These findings suggest that "memories" may be stored outside of the brain region in planaria or that the original brain may have trained the nervous system, which regulated how the new brain grew and what memories it regained.

Now THAT is an amazing memory!

Source:

Shomrat T, Levin M. An automated training paradigm reveals long-term memory in planaria and its persistence through head regeneration. The Journal of Experimental Biology, In Press.

dr. dolittle Fri, 08/16/2013 - 12:31

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I am fascinated by how worms can still keep their memory even after the regeneration of their head. However, will the worms lose their memory slowly after several times of regeneration? Or will the memory be stored in the nervous system forever?

The training of the worms, and how memory is stored outside of the brain region, let one think about how it is similar to the muscle memory in humans. Such as, a person who can play the piano when they are young and as they grow older (losing their memory), they can still play the piano due to their muscle memory. The difference is that there is no regeneration taking place in humans.

I wish I had the memory of a dolphin!

dr. dolittle — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 17:59:45 +0000

I wish I had the memory of a dolphin!

Kai, a dolphin involved in the study, was able to recognize the whistle of a fellow dolphin that Kai had not seen in years. Image by: Jason Bruck

Another reason to marvel at dolphins. As a follow up to the previous blog on dolphins calling each other by name, new research from Dr. Jason Bruck at the Institute for Mind and Biology (University of Chicago) shows that dolphins have the longest memory known in animals. In addition to Kai, shown above, a dolphin named Bailey recognized the whistle of Allie, even though they had not seen each other in more than 20 years! I am fairly certain I would not recognize the voice of someone I haven't seen in 20 years! Amazing findings!

The research was discussed on NPR yesterday. Just in case you did not get a chance to hear it, the story can be found here.

dr. dolittle Fri, 08/09/2013 - 13:59

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Findings of this sort make it clear that the concept of "personhood" on both a philosophical level and a legal level, needs to be extended to other animals that clearly demonstrate intelligence. At present that would include certain marine mammals (dolphins, whales), great apes (chimps, bonobos, gorillas), and arguably elephants.

These animals also provide important opportunities for exobiologists to observe types of intelligence, communication, and culture that are quite unlike our own. This has long-term value toward the time when we detect signals from civilizations in other star systems.

I've recently been reading that dolphins communicate using a form of clifford algebra. Seeing math through geometry is a great way to work on memory. Since this is how they talk, they are probably in a constant state of working out their memory.. Or maybe sounds look like a geometric picture. You can still remember a persons face after 20 years sometimes. Maybe they see the name like that.

Well, that kind of depends. As we all know, people's voices change over the years, although we don't really know if dolphins change their whistles and signals over time. If you hear the voice of your high school mate with no variation, I'm sure you'd at least have 65% chance of recognizing it!

My uncle died almost twenty years ago. I can still remember the sound of his voice, with auditory imagination of the sound and pitch as clear as if it was a strong visual memory.

I do have a good mind for sounds but guess it's also heavily dependent on (social) salience of the initial stimulus.

G. - Let's not forget parrots, who have complex social relationships (without genocide yet!), have proven their ability to understand abstract concepts, and can not just imitate but correctly use enough vocabulary in a totally alien language that the hypothesis that they normally possess no language whatsoever seems laughable.

I am 40 years old and I do remember the faces and voices of friends I have not seen for 30 years

At 65 years of age I have met people at reunions who's names I don't remember and who's faces are unrecognizable, but the sound of who's voices immediately triggers recognition.

Well, that kind of depends. As we all know, people’s voices change over the years, although we don’t really know if dolphins change their whistles and signals over time. If you hear the voice of your high school mate with no variation, I’m sure you’d at least have 65% chance of recognizing it!

Caffeine buzzzzz

dr. dolittle — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:25:28 +0000

Caffeine buzzzzz

Honeybee visiting a coffee flower, photo from Geraldine Wright

Apparently humans and honeybees share something in common when it comes to caffeine. Dr. Geraldine Wright (Newcastle University, England) discovered that bees are more likely to return to flowers that produce nectar containing caffeine. Their data suggest caffeine improves memory in bees. Caffeine is present in higher concentrations in the leaves and other tissues of the plant where it provides the added benefit of warding off predators.

According to a quote from The New York Times by Dr. Robert a Raguso at Cornell University, “It makes the reader think twice about where natural products that have economic importance to humans actually came from before we ‘discovered’ and co-opted their biology.”

Dr. Wright is studying the honeybees as models for drug abuse in humans.

It is fascinating that the neurochemistry of caffeine is so similar between humans and insects. Starbucks has the same effect on me...keeps me coming back for more.

Sources:

Wright GA, Baker DD, Palmer MJ, Stabler D, Mustard JA, Power EF, Borland AM, Stevenson PC. Caffeine in floral nectar enhances a pollinator's memory of reward. Science. 339: 1202-1204. DOI: 10.1126/science.

The New York Times

dr. dolittle Fri, 03/08/2013 - 10:25

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Coffee! Like caffeine to a bee.

Interesting article! Their data suggest caffeine improves memory in bees; but from a behavioural perspective would the bees be returning to the flower because it produced the most reinforcement? Hmmmm...

Thanks for sharing!

This article is very interesting because I have been drinking coffee since 7th grade and cannot miss a day. I know I experience these feelings of always coming back for more but find it fascinating that bees experience the same effect. According to this article (http://www.webmd.com/balance/caffeine-myths-and-facts) caffeine has some negative side effects when stopping caffeine intake abruptly. It can cause headache, fatigue, anxiety, and irritability. I have certainly had these side effects if I don't have my coffee in the morning. I wonder if bees experience the same effects when they don't get their caffeine.

Do bees get the same side effects as humans?

Great article. @Sarah It is incredible the amount of dimensions that consumption of caffeine can have, especially when we talk about human cognition. I also found a very interesting entry about such effects. Thank you!.

(http://psicologiayneurocienciaenespanol.blogspot.com/2013/04/mas-cafein…)

While You Were Sleeping

jhalper — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 11:00:48 +0000

While You Were Sleeping

“Imagine that you wake up in the morning feeling nothing special, yet you find yourself inexplicably behaving just a bit differently during the day. For example, you take a sniff every time you hear a tone,” says Prof. Noam Sobel. Of course, the people this actually happened to knew they had volunteered for a sleep experiment in Sobel’s lab. They knew that their sleep patterns had been closely monitored. But they had no recall, whatsoever, of the “lesson” they had learned while snoring peacefully. It was the sniffing that gave it away: While asleep, they had undergone conditioning to associate tones with smells. The next day, when the now awake volunteers heard the tones, their unconscious sniffs revealed whether they have been conditioned to associate the tone with a nice smell or a nasty one.

This may be the first incontrovertible demonstration of sleep learning in human adult brains. The trick, says Anat Arzi, a PhD student in Sobel’s group who led the project, was to find the right teaching method.

image: Thinkstock

Tests of verbal learning (think of the old tape recorder-under-the-pillow experiments) had pretty much ruled this out as way to absorb lessons painlessly in one’s sleep. And the results of other experiments either suggested that the subjects had briefly woken during the trials, or else they took place during unnatural sleep, with the subjects drugged to make sure they stayed out for the duration. So, on the one hand, years of sleep learning research had left the question up in the air and tending toward falling on the side of nonexistence. But on the other hand, a number of recent studies have suggested a close connection between sleep and learning and memory consolidation. “In spite of all the previous research, we thought that some kind of sleep learning should be possible,” says Arzi. “The question was: which kind?”

Tones and smells turned out to be ideal: They don’t wake the sleepers, yet they are sensed during sleep. And sniffing – the reflexive response to the odors – occurs whether one smells them asleep or awake. That meant that instead of relying on reported memories, the researchers only had to watch for the long, deep sniff we automatically take when we smell a good smell, or the short, shallow one associated with a bad smell to know that the subjects had been conditioned to associate a tone with a particular odor.

What’s next? Sobel and Arzi found that the conditioning is best retained when it takes place during non-REM sleep – the same sleep stage in which the things learned during the day get consolidated into memory. So there is an intriguing connection there that they want to explore. And, while we’ll never be able to study for that physics exam in our sleep, finding proof for one type of sleep learning suggests that others might be possible.

jhalper Sun, 08/26/2012 - 07:00

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Epilepsy medication reverses symptoms of Alzheimer's

dr. dolittle — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:03:11 +0000

Epilepsy medication reverses symptoms of Alzheimer's

Image from: Alzheimer's Association

Researchers Sanchez et al. from the Gladstone Institute, University of California San Franciso and Washington University School of Medicine discovered that an FDA-approved anti-convulsant medication used to treat epilepsy (levetiracetam) can also reverse memory loss in addition to reducing other Alzheimer's related symptoms in a mouse model of the disease.

Alzheimer's is currently the most common form of dementia (memory loss) representing 50-80% of cases. It is a disease that worsens over time. Although there are available medications to help slow the progression of the disease or lessen the symptoms, there is currently no cure. Presently, an estimated 5.4 million people have Alzheimer's disease in the United States and this number is expected to rise.

When administered to mice with Alzheimer's, levetiracetam was found to decrease abnormal signaling in the brain by 50% in just one day. By 2 weeks, neurons within the brain exhibited signs of improved communication. Using a maze test, the researchers were able to demonstrate improved learning and memory with the anti-convulsant medication. Moreover, proteins necessary for normal brain function were restored to normal levels in the treated animals.

More research is needed however, to determine whether this new use of levetiracetam in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease is effective and safe for humans. Although a recent trial showed that it could improve memory and brain function in patients with mild cognitive impairments:

Sources:

Sanchez PE, Zhua L, Verreta L, Vossela KA, Orra AG, Cirritoc JR, Devidzea N, Ho K, Yua G-Q, Palopa JJ, and Mucke L. Levetiracetam suppresses neuronal network dysfunction and reverses synaptic and cognitive deficits in an Alzheimer's disease model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Epub ahead of print. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1121081109

Alzheimer's Association

dr. dolittle Tue, 08/07/2012 - 14:03

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do you know that you can get infected to taeniasolium engesting the intamidiat host caring the worm. and the worm can even reach the brain and distub the brains work.

Well how do you extrapolate mouse memory to humans, this is creationism of a scientific kind Dr Donothing, LOL

That is precisely where more research is needed especially since these findings were made in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. The way that they measure mouse memory is to determine how well a mouse remembers their way around a maze...like a recall test. It was also shown to improve levels of proteins required for normal brain function. So the big assumption would be that if the treatment improved levels of these proteins, then perhaps brain function overall is improved.

In a more recent study at Johns Hopkins, Levetiracetam was shown to improve memory and brain function in humans with cognitive impairments that lead to Alzheimer's. The hope is to be able to use this drug as a way to slow down the progression of the debilitating disease. A video report from this study has been added to the blog entry.

The anti-convulsant medication reverses which symptoms of Alzheimer's? How much memory loss is reversed and how was this studied?

Emeryville Pharmaceuticals

How have treatments for other diseases fared in the leap from mouse to man? What is the comparative data?Seems a bit underwhelming that I have not seen more comment on levetiracetam result in the press, given the lack of any other promising treatments and the potential disasterous scale of the issue.

Since I was injured in a major car accident in 1991, I have had memory gaps of my youth, college, classical music (3 degrees), work etc. My recent memories are easily accessible but I have difficulty recalling details prior to the accident. Could this promising epilepsy drug be effective in helping me with my brain injury? Is there a clinical trial I could join ?

I would suggest that you discuss this with your doctor. I don't think they have looked at whether or not it would be useful at helping to reverse memory loss resulting from a traumatic brain injury.

My husband has epilepsy from a brain tumor, brain infections and 4 brain surgeries AND has been on Levetiracetam / Keppra for 4 years. It really does work! He should have memory loss due to the area where the tumor damaged his brain , he still has seizures -- yet his memory is strong. I am hopeful!

Personally, I have some experience with the use of levetiracetam in patients with Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy on a case level. These are of course NOT study results and are only personal impressions in patients with rather advanced forms of the disease. In my personal experience, I have never seen any beneficial effect in patients. On the contrary, patients with probable, moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease (NOT MCI) on levetiracetam seem to display significantly more behavioral and psychiatric symptoms in dementia (BPSD) which improve after changing the treatment for epilepsy. FRIN!

Doctor I have been experiencing temporary memory loss for about 10 to 15 seconds when I am very stressed out since the past 05 yearsI have consulted a nuber of doctors but no one has diagnosed yet. currently am using tegrol but these days am experiencing a lot of atttacks. can you please diagnose what i am suffering from and how it can be treated?

I find it a little confusing as to how it is possible that this medication can improve brain and memory function but at the same time cause cognitive impairment? Is that not contradictory that the meds are suppose o help the brain but the side effects are related to the brain? Did the research account the facts that humans do not share all the same proteins as mice. For example the apoE4 gene in humans is not found in mice. It is this gene that is responsible for the degeneration in Alzheimer's patients. Was this gene taken into account when conducting the experiment?