Janet Wilson on new research on the line between 'senior moments' and Alzheimer's

Our Janet Wilson, who has been doing work for UC Irvine, has a piece up on research into the difference between "senior moments and Alzheimer's. From her piece:

Now, with the help of Burns and other volunteers aged 18 to 89, the researchers have been able to identify for the first time in humans a long-hidden part of the brain known as the perforant path. The passage is believed to deteriorate gradually as part of normal aging and far more quickly as part of Alzheimer’s. Scientists have struggled for decades to locate the tiny pathway, which is linked to the hippocampus, a well-known center of memory.

The UCI researchers developed and used a new ultrahigh-resolution technique, outlined in a paper published June 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to electronically peer through dense matter near the seahorse-shaped hippocampus.

Locating the perforant path and monitoring its deterioration could distinguish normal aging from dementia much sooner than other methods, offering relief to absent-minded folks. The information could also be useful to drug companies and doctors testing Alzheimer’s treatments.

“The nice thing about this is we may be able to predict Alzheimer’s very early,” says Stark, who often inserted his own gleaming bald pate into the MRI to help develop their scanning techniques. “Let’s say you’re a drug company, and you think you’ve got a potentially effective treatment for slowing Alzheimer’s. You want to try it on people in the most preliminary stages of that disease, not those just experiencing normal aging.”