Over on the Mind the Brain blog, Stanford psychiatrist Shaili Jain, MD, discusses disorders of memory, including post-traumatic stress disorder and Alzheimer's, with Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel, MD.
Ongoing research conducted by Kandel has helped scientists better understand the basic molecular mechanisms underlying learning and memory. His latest study showed how prion-like proteins, which are similar to the prions behind bovine spongiform encephalopathy and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, are key for maintaining long-term memories in mice - and likely other mammals.
In Jain's conversation with Kandel, she asks him how these new findings may translate clinically and impact patients diagnosed with memory disorders. He responds:
We are already there in some areas. We have far to go in other areas, but I will give you an example. We have a pretty good understanding of Alzheimer's disease. We know the toxicity of beta amyloid. We do not know why the drugs that are directed against beta amyloid do not work, but one possibility that is being seriously entertained is that by the time the patient comes to see a physician, they have had the disease for ten years. That is a very long time and you lose a lot of nerve cells in ten years, and drugs do not bring nerve cells back once they are dead.
We need to diagnose the disease earlier and a major effort now, in Alzheimer's research, is early diagnosis. Imaging, cerebral spinal fluid, genetic warning signals etc.
The other thing is it has proven possible to define an independent disorder, age related memory loss. Recent work from our lab, and that of Scott Small, has shown there is a separate entity, independent of AD, called Age Related Memory Loss. We have identified the molecular pathways involved in that disorder. We have treatments that work very effectively in animals. I think the time is going to come soon when these will be tried in people.
All of these came out from a basic science and work with experimental animals. So even though we are in the very early stage of understanding the really complex functions of the brain, we are making progress and all of this will hopefully have some therapeutic impact.
Previously: Memory of everyday events may be compromised by sleep apnea, Malfunctioning glia - brain cells that aren't nerve cells - may contribute big time to ALS and other neurological disorders and The state of Alzheimer's research: A conversation with Stanford neurologist Michael Greicius
