How to solve a problem like dementia

Despite Alzheimer's disease being the most common neurodegenerative disorder, little is known about the underlying mechanisms at play. To better understand the disease animal models are used which have given us great insight to how the disease might work in humans. In this talk Dr Tamagnini will discuss the changes to electrical activity in the brain of a mouse with dementia, and how we can using non-invasive imaging techniques to track the hallmarks of the disease.

With the number of Alzheimer’s disease cases progressively rising and still relatively little known about what causes it, we need new ways of studying the very earliest disease stages. Using a new methodology it is now possible to look at the brain cells from people with Alzheimer’s disease using a certain variant of stem cell. The technique is non-invasive, and allows us to look at what makes the Alzheimer’s cells different from normal brain cells meaning we can begin to decipher what starts the disease.