Do you know what gamma waves are and what benefits they can bring to Alzheimer’s patients?Advances in science and technology, and their inseparability, have led to the development of new treatments that represent a ray of hope for these patients.
Alzheimer’s disease remains a big mystery. It is a disease that can only be confirmed by autopsy and there are still many doubts as to its origin.
- No treatment.
- Medication or other treatment has been found that slows or reverses the disease.
- Therefore.
- Any small progress that slows the progression of the disease or promotes cognitive enhancement is a valuable achievement.
Gamma waves are a model of neural oscillation with a frequency of between 20 and 100 Hz, most typically they manifest around 40 Hz.
These waves reflect high brain activity, superior to that reflected by beta waves, which are what are present when we are concentrated. These waves indicate that the brain is functioning “at full speed”, activating different regions.
These waves are believed to be those set in motion by complex executive functions or superior mental activity. These complex activities, such as orientation, attention, awareness, or reasoning, require coordinated activation of neurons from different regions of the brain to integrate different types of information and make sense of reality.
However, it seems that these waves reflect not only this type of activity, but also an activity that has nothing to do with the concentration or functioning of the brain, but can also be linked to explosive behaviors, high anxiety or horror reactions.
As we mentioned at the beginning, the origin of Alzheimer’s disease is not fully known, only a few characteristic pathological changes of the disease are known: deposits of beta-amyloid protein that eventually form and disable plaques around neurons, the formation of intracellular ovillo neurfibrillars and presence of phosphorylated tau protein.
As already studied, the gamma brain activity of Alzheimer’s patients appears to be altered, which can contribute to complex deficits in cognitive function, such as those mentioned above.
Based on this discovery, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a study with genetically modified mice to produce an excess of beta-amyloid, i. e. mice with Alzheimer’s disease.
The experiments, conducted by Li-Huei Tsai, director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, were to stimulate gamma wave activity in Alzheimer’s mice with a flashing light at 40 Hz.
The results showed that the amount of beta-amyloid plaques and phosphorylated tau protein decreased significantly, in addition, the activity of microglia, cells responsible for cleaning up brain waste, has been improved.
In this first experiment, they limited themselves to stimulating the gamma activity of the visual cortex. However, they wanted to go further and tried to induce gamma oscillations by exposure to 40 Hz tones. This, in addition to reducing the amount of beta-amyloid in the auditory cortex, also did it in the hippocampus. . This region is very important for the formation of memory.
Dissatisfied with the result, the researchers decided to test what effect the combination of the two types of stimulation would have: visual and auditory, as a result, they found that the effects were not only beneficial, but twice as beneficial as each of the stimuli. modalities alone. Even the microglia response was much stronger.
Tsai and her colleagues discovered that if rodents were stimulated and had a week of “rest,” during which they received no stimulation, the beneficial effects of gamma stimulation would disappear, indicating that this type of therapy should be intensive to be effective.
Although tests have already been started on healthy humans, the truth is that this technique has only been tested in mice with Alzheimer’s disease, and was recently tested in patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.
The most important puzzle has not yet been solved: will the human brain behave and improve in the same way as the rodent brain?
What do you think it would mean to discover that this type of stimulation is able to slow down or even slow down symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease?In my opinion, this would be an absolute revolution, because at present there is still no effective treatment for the common dementia majority in today’s world.