BTPro Master Unit with Mindwave App

NZ$469.90

Approx USD$280.69

 

"Scientists are not absolutely sure what causes Alzheimer’s but plaques and tangles are prime suspects in cell death and tissue loss in the Alzheimer brain.

Plaques are abnormal clusters of chemically “sticky” proteins called beta-amyloid that build up between nerve cells. The most damaging form of beta-amyloid may be groups of a few pieces rather than the plaques themselves. The small clumps may block cell-to-cell signaling at synapses. They may also activate immune system cells that trigger inflammation and devour disabled cells." Source

"Tangles form inside dying cells. Tangles are twisted fibers of a protein called tau. In healthy areas, tau helps keep the transport system on track. But in areas where tangles are forming, the twisted strands of tau essentially disintegrate the transport system so that nutrients and other essential supplies can no longer move through the cells, which eventually die"

"A combination of high blood pressure and decreased blood flow inside the brain may spur the buildup of harmful plaque and signal the onset of dementia, USC researchers have found.

“If you have problems with the blood vessels in the brain, then you’re going to end up with difficulty with thinking skills, cognition, memory, and ultimately this can be related to other brain pathologies such as Alzheimer’s disease,” said Daniel Nation, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

For the study published June 1 in the journal Brain, Nation used patient data from a national medical database, the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative housed at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, to explore whether constricted blood flow contributes to the buildup of amyloid plaque , consequently, to the onset of dementia. He also determined a new way to calculate cerebrovascular resistance — a stiffening of the vessels that results from high blood pressure and low blood flow. Source

.Neuroscientists are getting excited about non-invasive procedures to tune the brain’s natural oscillations.

"In March 2015, Li-Huei Tsai set up a tiny disco for some of the mice in her laboratory. For an hour each day, she placed them in a box lit only by a flickering strobe. The mice — which had been engineered to produce plaques of the peptide amyloid-ß in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — crawled about curiously. When Tsai later dissected them, those that had been to the mini dance parties had significantly lower levels of plaque than mice that had spent the same time in the dark1.

Tsai, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, says she checked the result; then checked it again. “For the longest time, I didn’t believe it,” she says. Her team had managed to clear amyloid from part of the brain with a flickering light. The strobe was tuned to 40 hertz and was designed to manipulate the rodents’ brainwaves, triggering a host of biological effects that eliminated the plaque-forming proteins." Source

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"So I have been trying the sound therapy on my wife who is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s and to my surprise after 8 days she started to show small signs of being more mentally alert than before. So I have continued to use your tone generator using a 40Hz sine wave for about an hour each day. (I’ve recently started to do it twice a day for slightly shorter sessions). So now 7 weeks on the improvement in her awareness has continued to the point where she is starting to be able to put a few words together and to respond to questions neither of which she has been able to do for nearly a year. " Tomasz P. Szynalski Apr 24, 2018

 

"Those neon green things in the image are microglia, the brain’s immune cells, or, as we describe them in our episode, the janitor cells of the brain. Straight from MIT’s research files, this image shows microglia who have gotten light stimulation therapy (one can only hope in the flicker room). You can see their many, super-long tentacles, which would be used to feel out anything that didn’t belong in the brain. And then they’d eat it!" Source

Bringing Gamma Back Podcast

"Today, a startling new discovery: prodding the brain with light, a group of scientists got an unexpected surprise -- they were able to turn back on a part of the brain that had been shut down by Alzheimer’s disease. This new science is not a cure, and is far from a treatment, but it’s a finding so … simple, you won’t be able to shake it. Come join us for a lab visit, where we’ll meet some mice, stare at some light, and come face-to-face with the mystery of memory. We can promise you: by the end, you’ll never think the same way about Christmas lights again." Source

"She has been using the sound therapy for several months now, usually for 1-2 hours per day. Within about a week, we saw some subject improvements. The improvements aren’t major but it seems to me that her improvements have plateaued. Even that is positive if it is helping to prevent decline. I have been following these scientific development 40 Hz therapy for afew of years. My wife has Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) which is also known a Visual Variant Alzheimer’s. " Stockett Apr 24, 2018

“The implications are significant,” says Michal Schwartz of the Weizmann Institute of Science, who was not involved in the work. And, she says, if the effects of gamma waves also improve cognition in Alzheimer’s models, “it’s unbelievable.”

"Now, a growing body of evidence, including Tsai’s findings, hint at a meaningful connection to neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The work offers the possibility of forestalling or even reversing the damage caused by such conditions without using a drug. More than two dozen clinical trials are aiming to modulate brainwaves in some way — some with flickering lights or sound, but most through the direct application of electrical currents to the brain or scalp (CES). They aim to treat everything from insomnia to schizophrenia and premenstrual dysphoric disorder." Nature 555, 20-22 (2018)

The science

It has been known since at least the 1980s that cognitive activity triggers brainwaves (wave-like patterns of activation) at a frequency of 40 Hz in humans and other mammals.

"Gamma brain waves are the fastest brainwave frequency with the smallest amplitude. They are associated with the “feeling of blessings” reported by experienced meditators such as monks and nuns, and with peak concentration and extremely high levels of cognitive functioning. Neuroscientists believe that gamma waves are able to link information from all parts of the brain and not only that, but the entire brain is influenced by the gamma wave."

"Most People have gamma brainwave activity, but the amount of gamma waves produced varies. Low amounts of gamma brainwave activity have been linked to learning difficulties, poor memory and impaired mental processing."

In 1991, researchers from the NYU Medical Center discovered that Alzheimer’s patients have reduced 40 Hz brainwaves compared with healthy people. (paywalled paper)

“More and more we’re finding that microglia drive the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders,” says Terrence Town of the University of Southern California,"

"In 2016, MIT’s Alzheimer’s group did experiments on transgenic mice with early Alzheimer’s disease and found that exposing them to a light flickering at a frequency of 40 Hz (40 times a second) for 1 hour a day for 7 days causes an almost 60% reduction in ß-amyloid plaques, which are a molecular hallmark of Alzheimer’s. 20 Hz and 80 Hz tones did not have the same effect. An important qualification here is that the effect was limited to the visual cortex, which is not significantly affected in human Alzheimer’s patients. Here’s an accessibly written report in The Atlantic and here’s the original paper (published in Nature) if you’re strong in science-speak. MIT also made a video about the findings."

“You can imagine these networks ping-ponging back and forth, which allows them to generate these gamma rhythms,” said Edward S. Boyden Boyden is part of the MIT team and previously helped develop the light-activated neuron technique, also known as optogenetics."

"According to the New Scientist (paywalled article), the same MIT team achieved even better results by playing mice a 40 Hz sound. ß-amyloid plaques shrank by about 50% in the auditory cortex and – crucially – in the hippocampus, perhaps because the two areas are close to each other. This is a very important discovery, because the hippocampus is the region of the brain which is involved in forming memories. It is the hippocampus that suffers the most damage in human Alzheimer’s patients. As of 1 Mar 2018, these results have not been published, but were presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference in Washington in November 2017."

"By restoring gamma waves disrupted by the neurodegenerative disease, “we can activate immune genes in the brain, which kick-start microglia to remove Aß plaques and possibly halt the progression of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Annabelle C. Singer, a member of the team now at Georgia Institute of Technology."

In March 2016, scientists at the University of Toronto published the results of a small, placebo-controlled pilot study (paywalled paper), in which they exposed 20 Alzheimer’s patients to a 40 Hz sound. After six 30-minute sessions (done twice a week), the patients’ average score on the 30-point SLUMS scale improved by 4 points, while the placebo group did not improve. It should be noted that the “dosage” of the treatment was rather low, which may explain the modest results.

 

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BTPro Master Unit with Mindwave App

NZ$469.90

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Approx USD$280.69
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