So when Tsai tuned her light to flash 40 times a second, or 40 hertz, and flickered it at the mice, their brains flickered back-generating gamma waves at a corresponding 40 hertz. Neurons encode our thoughts and actions and senses in this rhythmic electrical flutter. Brain waves are generated when large groups of neurons oscillate on and off together. In 2015 neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai, director at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was working on an experiment to manipulate that brain activity by flashing a white light at these mice. All the mice also had a third hallmark of the disease-irregular brain activity in the gamma range of brain waves that oscillate between 30 and 100 times a second.
Another batch of the mice developed amyloid beta plaques-sticky heaps of protein that dam the flow of communication between neurons. One batch of mice formed neurofibrillary tangles inside their neurons-dysfunctional knots of a protein called tau that can lead to the cell’s death. The work was done in mice with genetic alterations that doomed them to develop key symptoms and pathology of Alzheimer’s disease. Still, all this is a big if, Macauley acknowledges. It’s noninvasive and easy and low cost, potentially, so if it were to come to fruition in humans-that’s fabulous.” “I think it’s an absolutely fascinating paper to be honest,” says Macauley, who was not involved in this work. But new research is looking beyond drugs to see what relief might come from a simple LED light and a speaker.īathing patients in flashing light and pulsing sounds both tuned to a frequency of 40 hertz might reverse key signs of Alzheimer’s in the brain, according to a paper published in Cell on Thursday. Virtually all new treatments have failed in clinical trials. “We really don’t have much to offer people,” says Shannon Macauley, a neuroscientist at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Although a few drugs manage temporarily certain cognitive symptoms of the illness, none can stop or meaningfully slow its progression. There is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease.
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