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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – At a conference Wednesday afternoon, a UCSF researcher presented the results of a two-year study that found strong evidence that the risk factors for dementia can be reduced up to 30% with a modified lifestyle.

Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Epidemiology, presented her findings from a two-year randomized pilot study of nearly 200 older adults at the annual Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease conference in San Francisco.

She told KPIX 5 that it’s still a complex puzzle as to why some people get Alzheimer’s Disease and others don’t. That’s why her team of researchers joined forces with some colleagues at Kaiser Washington in Seattle and proceeded with the two-year study.

The formation of amyloid plaques in the brain is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. But drugs designed to reduce accumulations of these plaques have so far yielded, at best, mixed results in clinical trials.

Yale researchers have found, however, that swelling caused by a byproduct of these plaques may be the true cause of the disease’s debilitating symptoms, they report Nov. 30 in the journal Nature. And they identified a biomarker that may help physicians better diagnose Alzheimer’s and provide a target for future therapies.

According to their findings, each formation of plaque can cause an accumulation of spheroid-shaped swellings along hundreds of axons — the thin cellular wires that connect the brain’s neurons — near amyloid plaque deposits. The swellings are caused by the gradual accumulation of organelles within cells known as lysosomes, which are known to digest cellular waste, researchers found. As the swellings enlarge, researchers say, they can blunt the transmission of normal electrical signals from one region of the brain to another.

Tiny antenna-like organelles once thought to be holdovers from our ancient past appear to play a crucial role in keeping track of time, according to a recent study on mice by researchers from the University of California, Irvine (UCI), in the US. Known as cilia, the microtubule projections can be found throughout the more complex branches of the tree of life, including on many of our own cells.

Laser light therapy has been shown to be effective in improving short term memory in a study published in Science Advances.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and Beijing Normal University in China, demonstrated that the therapy, which is non-invasive, could improve short term, or working memory in people by up to 25%.

The treatment, called transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM), is applied to an area of the brain known as the right prefrontal cortex. This area is widely recognized as important for working memory. In their experiment, the team showed how working memory improved among research participants after several minutes of treatment. They were also able to track the changes in brain activity using electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring during treatment and testing.

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have discovered a key molecule that contributes to understanding and treating neurological diseases like epilepsy and autism.

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have discovered a long-sought gene-encoded protein that allows the brain to communicate a number of signals across synapses, or gaps between neurons.

The discovery was recently published in the journal Nature.

Why is consciousness so contentious? Neuroscience can increasingly explain many facets of consciousness, but what about conscious awareness itself? Some philosophers claim that although facets of consciousness—such as how we see edges or colors—can be explained, we have no possibility of explaining, in purely physical terms, the experience of consciousness.

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Tim Bayne received his undergraduate education from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and his graduate education at the University of Arizona. He taught at Macquarie University, Sydney from 2003 until 2006, and at the University of Oxford from 2007 until 2012.

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