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Despite the 3.8 million sports-related concussions that occur annually in the United States, there are no objective tools to confirm when an athlete is ready to resume play. Returning to play too early, before the brain has healed, increases an athlete's risk of long-term physical and cognitive problems, especially if he or she sustains another concussion. Currently, physicians and trainers must make return-to-play decisions based on an athlete's subjective, self-reported symptoms and their performance on standardized tests of memory and attention. A team led by Jessica Gill, R.N., Ph.D. of the National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health and Jeffrey Bazarian, M.D., M.P.H. of the University of Rochester Medical Center evaluated changes in tau in 46 Division I and III college athletes who experienced a concussion. Tau, which plays a role in the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's...

High serum cholesterol levels have been linked not only to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, but also to an increased risk of memory disorders. In the majority of the population, dietary cholesterol affects serum cholesterol levels only slightly, and many nutrition recommendations worldwide no longer set limitations on the intake of dietary cholesterol. In carriers of APOE4, however, the effect of dietary cholesterol on serum cholesterol levels is more visible. In Finland, the prevalence of APOE4, which is a hereditary variant, is exceptionally high and approximately one third of the population are carriers. APOE4 is a risk factor of both cardiovascular diseases and memory disorders. However, research data on the association between a high intake of dietary cholesterol and the risk of memory disorders in this population group hasn't been available until now. The dietary habits of 2,497 men aged between 42 and 60 years and with no baseline diagnosis of a memory dis...

Prickly pear timber and the brown seaweed, generally often known as Peacocks tail, are a standard sight within the Mediterranean. Credit score: Stephanie Ghio Alzheimer's and Parkinson's illness are basic age-related problems characterised by the buildup of sticky protein clumps that over time injury the nervous system to erode mobility or reminiscence. The human struggling they trigger, in addition to the pressure on healthcare, are monumental. However there may be hope on the horizon. Chemical substances extracted from the prickly pear and brown seaweed, two ubiquitous Mediterranean vegetation, have been elevated to potential drug candidates to fight the neurodegenerative illness, in accordance with analysis by scientists from the College of Malta and the  Centre Nationwide de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS/College of Bordeaux). "We...

The findings, published in the  Journal of Alzheimer's Disease , shed new light on the relationship between genes, lifestyle risk factors and dementia. Researchers, who tracked participants in the Canadian Study of Health and Aging, found that while carriers of a variant of the 'apolipoprotein E' genotype are more likely to develop dementia, inactivity dramatically increases the risk for non-carriers. "The important message here is that being inactive may completely negate the protective effects of a healthy set of genes," says Jennifer Heisz, an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University and co-author of the study. "Given that most individuals are not at genetic risk, physical exercise may be an effective prevention strategy, " she says. Approximately 47.5-million people worldwide are living with dementia . That number is expected to surge to 115.4 million by the year 2050. With no known cure, there is an ur...

"We hope that the future development of therapies aimed at preventing or removing the accumulation of aggregated proteins within the aging brain will lead to healthy lifestyles in the elderly by maintaining their cognitive capabilities," said Antonio Currais, Ph.D., a co-author of the work and senior research associate at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. "Our laboratory is very focused on developing therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases by targeting pathological processes that occur with aging and that we believe are the primary cause of those diseases. This is in direct contrast to the pharmaceutical companies that have focused their drug discovery approaches on very rare genetic forms of these diseases , basically ignoring aging." In the review, scientists suggest that because nerve cells do not divide and cannot dilute out damaged proteins by distributing them between two new cells, the proteins accumul...

"While being an E4 carrier is the strongest risk factor to date of Alzheimer's dementia and cognitive decline in industrial populations, it is associated with greater cognitive performance in individuals facing a high parasite and pathogen load, suggesting advantages to the E4 allele under certain environmental conditions," said Benjamin C. Trumble, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. "The current mismatch between sedentary postindustrial lifestyles and active parasite-rich lifeways experienced throughout most of human history may be critical for understanding genetic risk for cognitive aging." Trumble and colleagues examined cognitive performance and parasite exposure data from a remote population of forager-horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon , called the Tsimane. The Tsimane experience high parasite loads,...

"Chicoric acid, a nutraceutical component of chicory, also exists extensively in Echinacea purpurea, lettuce, dandelion, and other edible plants and vegetables," said Xuebo Liu, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work at the College of Food Science and Engineering, Northwest A&F University, in Yangling, China. "Chicoric acid mitigated lipopolysaccharide-induced amyloidogenesis and memory impairment via inhibiting NF?B signal pathway, suggesting that chicoric acid supplementation might be a plausible therapeutic intervention for neuroinflammation-related diseases such as Alzheimer's disease." To reach their conclusions, Liu and colleagues used three groups of mice: a control group, a group that received lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and another group that received both LPS and chicoric acid (CA). Learning and memory capabilities were evaluated using two separate behavioral tests (Y-maze and Morris water maze) four hours after LPS injection. They found that t...

Microglia cells (inexperienced spider shapes). Credit score: Picture courtesy of College of Southampton Cells within the mind accountable for detecting and fixing minor injury renew themselves extra rapidly than beforehand thought, new analysis has proven. A research, led by the College of Southampton and printed in Cell Experiences, exhibits that the turnover of the cells, known as Microglia, is 10 occasions sooner, permitting the entire inhabitants of Microglia cells to be renewed a number of occasions throughout a lifetime. "Microglia are consistently scanning the mind to search out and repair points -- you may name them the housekeepers of the mind," stated Dr Diego Gomez-Nicola, of the College of Southampton, who supervised the research. "We beforehand thought that microglia would renew themselves so slowly that an entire lifetim...

"Memory decline brings much suffering to the affected individuals and their families and leads to staggering social and economic costs," said Gleb Shumyatsky, an associate professor in the Department of Genetics in the School of Arts and Sciences, who co-authored the study with former postdoctoral researcher Shusaku Uchida. "This work may provide scientists with answers and therapeutic help in the future for those going through normal aging or suffering from dementia." The research published on January 10 in  Cell Reports  focuses on the signaling pathways in the hippocampus, the area of the brain where learning and memory takes place. The scientists looked at how information is transmitted from the synapses -- the point where neurons connect and communicate with each other -- to the nuclei in the hippocampal neuronal cells. Using laboratory mice, researchers found that a protein (CRTC1) enhances memory by controlling gene expression -- a process that allow...

The year-long study was undertaken by Dr Claire Kelly and Dr Richard Yarwood from the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at Plymouth University with support from Ian Sherriff, Academic Partnership Lead for Dementia at the University and Chair of the Prime Minister's Rural Dementia Friendly Task and Finish Group. It was funded by the Seale Hayne Educational Trust with support from the Farming Community Network . The four areas of concern identified by the study were: the farm environment; a reluctance to ask for help; support services, and; changing rural communities. The areas of concern emerged after listening to farmers and their families about their experiences of dementia and how it impacts on their business and home lives. Sixteen farmers from across Devon were interviewed, along with seven professionals from different organisational perspectives working with, and supporting, farmers living with dementia. Concerns about the farm environment related...