How Flickering Light Can Help Fight Alzheimer's

A study in the Journal of Neuroscience has yielded new insights into how flickering light exposure at 40 beats per second (40 Hz) can benefit people with Alzheimer's disease, reports Medical News Today . Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) researchers followed up earlier research that discovered a link between gamma brainwaves and Alzheimer's, and demonstrated that disrupting gamma in mice led to more plaque protein accumulation between brain cells. However, exposing the mice to flickering light at 40 Hz improved gamma and reduced plaque buildup by increasing the production of microglia. The latest study examined the immune mechanisms at work, which coincided with similar research involving human subjects at Emory University. The researchers learned that exposing mice to 40 Hz light triggered the brain's rapid release of more cytokines — a protein that communicates with other cells — and higher activation of phosphate proteins. "The phosphoproteins showed up first. It looked as though they were leading, and our hypothesis is that they triggered the release of the cytokines," said Georgia Tech's Annabelle Singer. The increased discharge of the cytokine Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor was clearly connected to the promotion of microglia.