A gorgeously warm and sunny spring day in the Pacific Northwest!
We happily rolled our Noggin brain cart towards the riverside home of the Alzheimer’s Association of Oregon for another morning of public outreach…
It was Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, and Tracy Morgan, the Executive Director of the Association, had reached out to see if we might drop by to talk neuroscience, discuss research, make art and offer their staff and kids an opportunity to hold and examine some real human brains…
We had great fun asking some well-informed young people what they already knew about the brain. A few had recently attended the OHSU Brain Fair at OMSI, and had crafted colorful neurons and held real noggins at our (mobbed!) outreach table…
LEARN MORE: Putting the brains in Brain Fair!
We described how young brains like theirs were busy, actively forming and refining connections (called synapses) between billions of brain cells, linking their developing networks of neurons to effectively channel information to enable perception (what they saw, heard and felt), and also the memories they established and recalled, their expectations and assumptions, their decisions and actions…
Alzheimer’s disease is a disconnection syndrome, where a sticky plaque (made of a protein called beta-amyloid) collects in synapses and breaks these important links. It is a devastating disorder. A lifetime of wiring is disrupted, so what you see, hear and feel no longer routes effectively, and you lose recognition and memory.
In addition, the neat, parallel molecular tracks that run through brain cells, which normally permit the essential transport of genetically expressed protein machinery from one end to another, become tangled and disrupted, ultimately killing off more and more neurons…
Plaques accumulating outside neurons, disconnecting them; tau tangles forming within
LEARN MORE: Alzheimer’s Scientific Images and Video
LEARN MORE: What Is Alzheimer’s?
LEARN MORE: Network Dysfunction in AD: Refining the Disconnection Hypothesis
The Alzheimer’s Association is the leading global voluntary health organization in Alzheimer’s care and support, and the largest private nonprofit funder of Alzheimer’s research. The Oregon chapter provides millions in grants to Alzheimer’s researchers at OHSU…
Two wonderful undergraduate outreach volunteers from Portland State University, Justin Navarro and Aaron Eisen, led everyone in a tour of important brain regions. We emphasized that not all areas are equally affected by the plaques and tangles of this degenerative disorder…
While Alzheimer’s severely damages cortical (and some subcortical) networks (including a critical area called the hippocampus) that are essential for important aspects of memory, it typically leaves other regions – including those engaged in physical and emotional responses to music – relatively, and thankfully, unscathed…
LEARN MORE: Beethoven, Brains, and Bloody Mary’s
We also discussed how it’s possible to grow new neurons in your hippocampus – a topic discussed at length during the recent Society for Neuroscience Chapter meeting at the Edgefield Hotel in Troutdale. In fact, perhaps even Noggin (well, at least the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) antagonist known as Noggin, which is expressed by cells in the olfactory bulb, piriform cortex, hippocampus and cerebellum..!) promotes neurogenesis!
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LEARN MORE: Noggin Expands Neural Stem Cells in the Adult Hippocampus
We entertained more great questions from kids and staff, and learned about how Noggin (Northwest Noggin – us!) and the Alzheimer’s Association might partner again in the future…
And of course we looked at brains!
Many thanks to Tracy and all the staff and children we met today on the sunny banks of the Willamette River!
