Scientists : Alzheimer's 'Lost Memories' May One Day Be Recoverable

Massachusetts: Alzheimer's disease, one of the most dreadful diseases in the world is now seeing the ray of hope for the first time after scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled a possible treatment that could one day offer a cure to the ravages of the disease.

Japanese scientist Susumu Tonegawa, a Noble laureate, said studies on mice showed that by stimulating specific areas of the brain with blue light, scientists could make the creatures recall thoughts that were otherwise unavailable to them. Tonegawa said: “The important point is that this is a proof of concept. That is, even if a memory seems to be gone, it is still there. It's a matter of how to retrieve it.”

The research involved two groups of mice. One was normal and the other was genetically engineered to have Alzheimer's-like symptoms. Both groups were given a mild electric shock to their feet. The first group appeared to remember the trauma of the incident by showing fear when placed back in the box where they had been given the shock. The Alzheimer's mice, on the other hand, seemed to quickly forget what happened and did not have an upset reaction to the box. Their reaction changed dramatically when the scientists stimulated tagged cells in their brains in the hippocampus — the part of the brain that encodes short-term memories — with a special blue light. When they were put back in the box following the procedure, their memories of the shock appeared to have returned, and they displayed the same fear as their healthy counterparts.

The scientists also tested whether a period of treatment using optogenetics (a biological technique which involves the use of light to control cells in living tissue,) could cause the mice to remember things on their own. The mice were given three hours of optogenetics to stimulate the proper cells in their brains, and put in the original chamber a week later. Without the prompting of scientists, the mice remembered the fear caused by getting shocked in the chamber.

While there is no immediate talk of testing the cure on human as of yet, but this certainly gives hope to thousands and thousands of people around the globe who are suffering from Alzheimer's. More research and studies in the same direction might soon make the cure possible for humans.