New hope

Tim Lamden reports for The Daily Mail,

New hope for dementia and brain-damaged patients: Scientists develop implant that can save short-term memories from being forgotten.

Dementia sufferers and brain-damaged soldiers who cannot recall the recent past have been given new hope of retaining memories - with the advent of an electrical implant.

Researchers in the US have developed the world’s first prosthetic implant to help a disabled brain encode memories to make them last.

The essential part of the research is a computer algorithm that mimics the electrical signalling used by the brain to translate short-term into permanent memories.

...The implant has been developed at the University of Southern California and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in a decade-long collaboration.

Although there is no way of ‘reading’ a memory, the electrical signalling makes it possible to bypass a damaged or diseased region of the brain and decode the content or meaning of a memory from its electrical signal.

According to the Financial Times, researchers told an international conference in Milan that the implant has been tested successfully on rats and monkeys and was now being used on human brains.

The project is funded by Darpa, the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is interested in new ways to help injured soldiers recover from memory loss.

But the researchers say the technology could also help to treat neuro-degenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, by enabling electrical brain signals to bypass damaged areas in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory centre, where memories are then stored.

If it is damaged or degraded, it can fail to turn recent events into long-term memories.

Read more here.

How's your memory?

The editors of Prevention have put together an article to help us prevent memory loss. Here are some of their suggestions:

Give your mind a workout.
Practice brain games, fill in crossword puzzles, and do memory exercises that stress verbal skills.

Bite into brain foods: Enrich your diet with plenty of omega-3 fats (hello, salmon!), low-glycemic-index carbohydrates (e.g., whole grains), and antioxidants. And consider eating several smaller meals throughout the day. Eating five small meals prevents dips in blood glucose levels, and glucose is the primary energy source for the brain.

Keep your body fit. Take brisk walks each day and do stretching exercises. Increased cardio can make your brain actually grow, with more white matter and more neuron connections.

Make managing your stress a priority.
Stretching and relaxation exercises help keep anxiety in check. Stress causes the body to release cortisol, and cortisol has been found to shrink the memory centers in the brain, which results in impaired memory. Meditation has also been proven to substantially improve memory.

Check your iron.
Iron helps the neurotransmitters essential to memory function properly—and your body may be sensitive to low amounts. In one study, women low in iron missed twice as many memory questions as women with adequate levels.

Don't multitask. Listening to the news while you read a magazine will impair your ability to recall either later. When you attend to multiple tasks, the brain switches processing to another region that retains fewer details. Focus on one task at a time to keep a better recollection of each one.

Control your cholesterol.
The plaque buildup caused by high cholesterol doesn’t only damage the veins of your heart, but blockage of the blood vessels in your brain can also deprive it of valuable nutrients and cue memory problems. And it doesn’t take much plaque to block the tiny vessels, so check your cholesterol levels regularly.

Check your meds.
Many prescription drugs can affect your memory, and the older you are, the longer drugs stay in your system. Drugs that can cause memory lapses include antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, beta-blockers, chemotherapy, Parkinson’s drugs, sleeping pills, painkillers, antihistamines, and statins.

Eat an apple a day...…to keep the neurologist away. Apples have enough antioxidants to raise levels of acetylcholine, which is an essential neurotransmitter for memory. The same antioxidants can also protect your brain from harmful free radicals.

Sip red wine.
Red wine contains the compound resveratrol, which may help ward off Alzheimer’s disease. Its ability to lower cholesterol levels also helps prevent plaque buildup in your entire body, including your brain.

Read more here.