Assignment 2 Re-purpose

8/17/2019 Assignment 2 Re-purpose

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Background Information

The brain is essentially the most significant

organ in the body, next to the heart. All of the

amazing memories we make on a daily basis

and important information we store away for

future references, all thanks are due to the

brain. What happens when it ceases to

function and all the memories we’ve retained

gets lost? How do we cope? Who will you

remember? Who won’t you remember?

These are all questions following the

diagnosis of dementia, more specifically

Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s, often just referred

to as Alz, is the 6th leading cause of death in

the United States and for every 67 seconds

that passes, one person in the US develops

the illness. It is most common in folks ages

65 and older but can be developed in people

younger (Burns, Alistar, Iliffe, 338:467-

471).

Alz is a brain disorder that gradually

destroys memory and our ability to think,

and ultimately the ability to carry out the

simplest of tasks. It is also irreversible, and

patients are left with nothing but treatment

that is made to slow the progression. In late

stages of Alz, you lose full function of

basic motor skills and loss of function

progresses throughout the entire body,

which in turn leads to death. The reasoning

behind my research is to determine what

aspect of brain is most responsible for our

memory and the differentiation between

normal forgetfulness and forgetting as a

result of Alzheimer’s. In regards to my

study, I plan to gather individuals who are

in the early and mid stages of Alzheimer’s

and people who aren’t affected to

determine the rate at which they forget

received information and compare them to

individuals whose brain are deemed

normal.


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Literature Review

It is frustrating and

sometimes scary when we find

ourselves not being able to

remember certain information.

In the short video composed by

neuroscientist, Neil Burgess, he

explains to us how we

remember things. In the case oftrying to remember where we

parked in a large parking lot, the

hippocampus comes into play.

The hippocampus is located in the

temporal lobe just a small distance from

the center of the brain. Our hippocampus

is a form of storage for our long-term

memory and so when damaged, much

like what happens to patients with

Alzheimer’s, you forget things like where

you parked your car. The neurons that are

contained in the hippocampus sends out

shocks as means of communication when

we are in a specific place of our

environment.

The brain over time gets familiar with oursurroundings and marks it on an

individual neuron in the brain much like

we do on a map. There are over 100

billion neurons in the hippocampus and

each are responsible for remembering

different things so essentially we know

where we are parked or what direction to

turn next when we are going home due to

those specific neurons being signaled

(Burgess, TEDtalks).

The hippocampus does a similar process when it comes to episodic memories. If you ever find

yourself trying to remember a past event in your life such as your first day of high school, graduation

or even the first time you rode a bike, you’ll not only remember when it occurred but also where it

did. This is due to the brain using special cells within the hippocampus to mark or “geotag” every

event in our life (J. Hamilton “Brain Cells Geotag Memories..”).


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We typically remember almost every event following the age of three but not prior and this is said to

be due to childhood amnesia. As described by Sigmund Freud, we try to repress memories from

infancy and this was proven throughout a survey in 1948 by Waldfogel. Waldfogel did an

interrogation in which people has to state their earliest memories throughout their life. There were a

series of scarce memories prior to the age of 8 but no one could recall events before the age of 3

(Eacott, 8:46-49). So for the events we do remember, the timing of it and location are ultimately

fused together by geotagging and this is actually the same concept of a digital camera when a photo is

taken it automatically tags its date, time and location (J. Hamilton “Brain Cells Geotag

Very often people will relate forgetfulness with old age. It is typically a common statement to

hear people say, “I must be getting old” at the event of misplacing an item or lacking the ability to

remember minute things. We all forget things from time to time even with a healthy brain. In an

experiment that was conducted by Eddinghaus in 1855 where he learned a list of nonsense

syllables, that demonstrated the rate at which information is forgotten. After learning the syllables

and being able to repeat without making any errors and testing the amount forgotten by the

method of relearning, shows after 20 minutes 0 percent of the processed information was

forgotten. As the time increased, within an hour more than 55 percent of the information was

forgotten and by the 6th day a whooping 75 percent was no longer remembered. These learning

and forgetting experiments have been repeated various times and the subjects in the experiment

did not report to have poor memories (Fernberger, 56-59).


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Very often people will relate forgetfulness with old age. It is typically a common statement to

hear people say, “I must be getting old” at the event of misplacing an item or lacking the ability to

remember minute things. We all forget things from time to time even with a healthy brain. In an

experiment that was conducted by Eddinghaus in 1855 where he learned a list of nonsense

syllables, that demonstrated the rate at which information is forgotten. After learning the syllables

and being able to repeat without making any errors and testing the amount forgotten by the

method of relearning, shows after 20 minutes 0 percent of the processed information was

forgotten.

With the rapid increase of Alzheimer’s, everyone worries at the slightest memory failure and fear they

might suffer from the disease. What we need to understand is that there is a difference between normal

and abnormal memory. It is natural that as we get older, new information that the brain receives will

cause a delay in learning it and the brain starts to retain less information as opposed to when younger.

Not to say someone of an older age can’t have a better memory than someone younger than they are

but typically as we age, this is what the brain undergoes. Age related changes in memory differ in

many significant ways from the changes in memory caused by alzheimer’s disease (Albert, 352: 1703-

1709). In the “Building a Mystery” journal (Gaines, Whitehouse, 13:61-74), it talks about applying

Mild Cognitive Impairment to patients. MCI can mean two things, that an individual has early onset

Alzheimer’s, one doesn’t or one will develop. Every form of progressive degenerative dementia

s m toms ma be resent but not alwa s resent enou h to dia nose as dementia.


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Entering the Conversation

After thoroughly reading through my sources

and determining that the hippocampus is the

aspect of the brain in charge of memory loss, I believe more focus should be done on this

specific aspect of the brain for research.

Forgetting is normal, it is a part of life though

some tend to have better memories than others,

we all forget something whether it may be to

return a call, do an assignment or the name of

someone you’ve recently met. It is extremely

crucial that the hippocampus remains healthy for

complete function to be carried out. Whendamaged we can begin to draw concerns, as it

will no longer be just forgetting the name of

someone you’ve just met but the names of those

closest to you.


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But what really occurs with the activity of the hippocampus when

we receive information? How long does it take for the hippocampus

to retain any given information? I believe a study can be designed

to demonstrate the rate at which information is lost between people

with Alzheimer’s and people without, while undergoing functional

analysis to monitor the hippocampal activity.

To conduct this study, I would gather (with consent from families)

about 16 patients, 8 from the early stage of Alzheimer’s and 8 from the

mid and another 8 individuals who do not suffer from any form of

dementia. The early stage patients will be between the ages 50 and 60,

the mid stage are between 70 and 80. The ages of the eight people who

do not have the disease are 25, 30, 45, 50, 65, 73, 80 and 85. They will

all be placed under a functional analysis screening tool while being

asked a series of questions.

Each patient will be asked the same 6 memory questions, ranging

from least to most difficult and expected to give their response within

a certain time frame. In order to see how long the memory is retained,

we will do 2 minutes from when the question is asked to receive

their answer. This will be repeated three times to see if there are any

changes in answers. The questions that will be asked are as followed:


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1. What did you do prior to coming here?

2. What did you have for breakfast this

3. What is your home address? (Street name,

town, state, building number, zip code)

4. You will be given the names of five animals

that you will be asked to repeat them in the

order they are given: cat, cow, dog, elephant,

horse, sheep.

5. What did you do

yesterday morning?

6. What was the first

question we asked?


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Questions asked Time to

respond

Time

taken torespond

Was the

answercorrect?

Was the answer

incorrect?

Did answer

changethroughout any of

the 3 rounds?

What did you do prior tocoming here?

2 minutes

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

2 minutes

What is your home address?

(Street name, twon, state, building number, zip code)

2 minutes

You will be given the namesof five animals that you will

be asked to repeat in theorder they are given: cat,

cow, dog, elephant, horse,sheep.

2 minutes

What did you do yesterday

morning?

2 minutes

What was the first question

we asked?

2 minutes


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Patients Hippocampalactivity prior to

answer

HippocampalActivity while

answering

HippocampalActivity post

answering

Was the changeany different

throughout each

round? (imagesincluded)

Early stage

patients Alz (8 patients assessed

individually)

Mid stage AlzPatients (8

patients assessedindividually)

Patients withoutthe disease (8

patients assessedindividually)


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Conclusion

After the study is conducted and all information is received we will

carefully review our data. We will compare the results from the first round of the

study to the third. This will help us to reach the understanding of the

hippocampal activity when affected by Alzheimer’s and when it isn’t as well as

the timing and how long it takes to retain the information. As i’ve stated earlier,

some people tend to have better memories than others, this can also show any

significant differences amongst the hippocampal activity of the 4 people that do

not have Alzheimer’s. For instance why do two people with normal memory,

remember things at a different pace.

Our memory is essentially one of our most important tools

in life. Almost, if not everything we do is based off our memory.

Our daily routines, such as brushing our teeth, going to school,

to work, eating at specific times are all because we have them

stored in an extremely “sacred” place, that can either make us or

break us. It is strange to think how unnoticed the hippocampus

goes when it has such a major job. Alzheimer’s disease slowlydamages our memory while simultaneously deteriorating the

brain.


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We often fear being a victim of such an unfortunate disease that we begin to

question every slight detail we forget. We ask ourselves, why don’t I

remember small details? Could I potentially have this disease? Is this genetic?

What if I find out when it’s too late? It is natural to forget, we all do it and my

research goes further into differentiating, normal memory and the memory of

someone with the illness. In my research after preparing my study, I believe I

may have aided in finding answers to frequently arising unanswered questions

that can prevent progress of the disease or possibly preventing the disease on a

whole. With the questions I formulated while monitoring the activity of the

brain will demonstrate the difference between someone with a normal brain

and their activity as opposed to the patients without a normal brain. The

questions were designed to see the rate at which they answered and if that had

any impact on the hippocampal activity whilst answering. The longer they took

to answer may affect changes in activity and we compared them to those who

answered at a much faster rate. During the comparison we can answer

questions pertaining to why it is we forget/remember at different rates. In

previous researches that were held, there were experiments similar where they

did rates of how quickly information is forgotten and I feel my research

intertwines with that.

For upcoming studies, I believe we can go further by performing a

longitudinal study on individuals’ hippocampal activity from the time they are

born to the age of 65 (the age you are most likely to develop the disease). We


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ibliography

Albert, Marilyn S.. “The Ageing Brain: Normal and Abnormal Memory”. Philosophical

Transactions: Biological Sciences 352.1362 (1997): 1703–1709.

(Albert, 352: 1703-1709)

Barnes, R. F., Raskind, M. A., Scott, M. and Murphy, C. (1981), Problems of Families Caring for

Alzheimer Patients: Use of a Support Group. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 29: 80–

85. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-5415.1981.tb01233.x

Burns, Alistair, and Steve Iliffe. “Alzheimer's Disease”. BMJ: British Medical Journal 338.7692

(2009): 467–471. Web...

Eacott, Madeline J.. “Memory for the Events of Early Childhood”. Current Directions in

Psychological Science 8.2 (1999): 46–49.

Fernberger, Samuel W. "How We Remember." The Scientific Monthly 39.00963771 (1934): 56-59.

JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.


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Gaines, Atwood D., and Peter J. Whitehouse. "Building a Mystery: Alzheimer's Disease, Mild

Cognitive Impairment, and Beyond." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 13.1 (2006): 61-74.

Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Hamilton, John. "Brain Cells 'Geotag' Memories To Cache What Happened - And Where." NPR.

NPR, 28 Nov. 2013. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Hamilton, J. (2015, July 21). Women's Brains Appear More Vulnerable To Alzheimer's Than Men's.

Retrieved March 12, 2016, from http://www.npr.org/sections/health-

shots/2015/07/21/425054345/womens-brains-appear-more-vulnerable-to-alzheimers-than-mens

Healy, Bernadine. "Pumping The Neurons." U.S. News & World Report 134.23 (2003): 29.

Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Mar. 2016.

Neil Burgess: How Your Brain Tells You Where You Are. Dir. Neil Burgess. Perf. Neil Burgess.

TED Talks. TEDSalon, Nov. 2011. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Schuff, N., N. Woerner, L. Boreta, T. Kornfield, L. M. Shaw, J. Q. Trojanowski, P. M. Thompson,

C. R. Jack, and M. W. Weiner. "MRI of Hippocampal Volume Loss in Early Alzheimer's


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Disease in Relation to ApoE Genotype and Biomarkers." Brain 132.4 (2008): 1067-077. Web. 09

Feb. 2016

Wilson, Robert S., and David A. Bennett. “Cognitive Activity and Risk of Alzheimer's Disease”.

Current Directions in Psychological Science 12.3 (2003): 87–91. Web..

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