Brain Combats Dementia by Shifting Resources

A Baycrest-University of Arizona study published in Neuroimage: Clinical suggests the brain reassigns tasks to different regions to compensate for neurodegenerative disorders, reports ScienceDaily . The researchers noted subjects diagnosed with Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) harnessed a different brain region to process the meaning of words. Whereas people usually rely on the left side of the brain to comprehend words read or heard, those with PPA exhibit more brain activity on the right, and this observation could be used to help develop targeted treatments to preserve brain function. The team performed brain imaging on 28 adults between 58 and 83, 13 of whom were diagnosed with PPA. As their brains were scanned, participants were asked to read sentences that appeared on a screen, some of which had grammatical errors or mismatched words. People with PPA had more difficulty detecting the errors and demonstrated a slower and smaller spike in brain activity when picking up on incorrect words, while those who performed better had a larger response in the right side of the brain compared to healthy adults. The researchers are currently using this brain activity data to help treat PPA subjects with targeted brain stimulation. Their work also will investigate the short- and long-term effects of this procedure.