Evidence Suggests that Alzheimer’s May Not Destroy Memories, Only Block Them

For a long time, scientists worked and studied Alzheimer’s without a sufficient model of the disease outside of live human cases. This is why, in part, Alzheimer’s was thought to permanently destroy memories. For all the evidence that has been gathered from live patients, Alzheimer’s does permanently prevent the brain from recalling memories. However, scientists are unable to observe how Alzheimer’s destroys memories in the same way they are unable to observe how the brain recalls them.

Finding a working model of Alzheimer’s became a top priority for research groups. It is standard practice with diseases and other chronic illnesses to test potential treatments on mice or other animal models that resemble human structures. While these animal models are not 100 percent accurate, they provide critical starting points for human trials and can lead to new discoveries into how a disease progresses or operates. For the most part, any leap in understanding or treatment of a disease can be traced back to an animal study.

In the case of Alzheimer’s, a transgenic model in mice has been aggressively sought. In order to get a mouse to express the same symptoms as an Alzheimer’s patient, scientists needed to identify a gene or common factor in people who are prone to Alzheimer’s. They discovered that certain genes are commonly expressed in the children of Alzheimer’s patients, and scientists were able to tap into this gene to create a working model of Alzheimer’s in mice.