Alzheimer’s disease is a kind of sickness that affects the brain, causing memory loss and confusion.
It’s like a thief that slowly steals a person’s ability to remember and think clearly.
This sickness doesn’t affect all parts of the brain the same way, it tends to harm some parts more than others.
The Mammillary Body and Memory
There’s a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, and within it is a little area named the mammillary body. This part is very important for our memory.
Interestingly, when Alzheimer’s disease starts, this little part of the brain is one of the first places it hits.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found that some nerve cells, or neurons, in this area are more vulnerable to the disease.
These vulnerable neurons become overactive and start to degenerate, or break down, which affects memory.
The Research Study
The MIT researchers, led by Dr. Li-Huei Tsai, looked closer at the mammillary body. They noticed that only certain neurons in the lateral mammillary body (one side of the mammillary body) are most affected by Alzheimer’s disease.
This finding is surprising because the medial mammillary body (the other side) stays mostly unaffected.
These scientists also found that a drug used to treat epilepsy, a condition that causes seizures, can help reverse memory problems caused by the overactive and damaged neurons in the mammillary body.
Discovering the Vulnerable Neurons
In an earlier study done in 2019, Dr. Tsai and her team saw that the mammillary bodies had a lot of a harmful protein called amyloid beta. This protein is known to cause trouble in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
To understand better, the researchers looked at the gene activity of different neurons in the mammillary body.
They found that the lateral neurons, or those on one side, were more active and therefore, possibly more prone to getting affected by Alzheimer’s disease.
The Hyperactive Neurons and Memory Loss
The researchers found that these overactive neurons start to show problems at a very young age, even before the harmful amyloid proteins begin to form.
As the mice in the study grew older, these neurons became even more overactive and more likely to break down.
The mice with overactive neurons in the lateral mammillary body had trouble forming new memories. However, when they were given the epilepsy drug, their memory improved!
Learning from Human Brains
The researchers then looked at brain tissue from people, both with and without Alzheimer’s disease. They found that, like mice, humans also have overactive neurons in the lateral mammillary bodies.
These findings show that the mammillary body is an important part of the brain to study to understand Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers hope that future medicines could target this area to slow down the progression of the disease.
The Next Steps
Now, researchers are trying to understand how these overactive neurons in the mammillary body are connected to other parts of the brain.
They want to learn more about how these connections help form memories and what makes these neurons more likely to break down in Alzheimer’s disease.
This work could help develop better treatments for people suffering from this illness.
By understanding how Alzheimer’s disease affects the brain, we may one day be able to stop the thief that steals memories and thinking abilities from people. This research is just one step toward that goal.
If you care about Alzheimer’s, please read studies about Vitamin D deficiency linked to Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, and Oral cannabis extract may help reduce Alzheimer’s symptoms.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about Vitamin B9 deficiency linked to higher dementia risk, and results showing flavonoid-rich foods could improve survival in Parkinson’s disease.
The study was published in Science Translational Medicine.
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