Doctors Study Dogs With Dementia
- 11 years ago
Doctors study dogs with dementia.
Studying dogs with dementia may help scientists develop a treatment for humans with Alzheimer’s or other forms of the disease.
Michael Valenzuela, associate professor at the University of Sydney said that dogs have “many parallels with human dementia in terms of memory loss, disorientation, agitation and also, at the level of pathology, many similarities in terms of Alzheimer plaques building up in the brain.”
If the studies are successful, researchers think they will be able to start human clinical trials for dementia treatments.
There are a few different kinds of dementia, and most of them, like Alzheimer’s disease don’t have a cure.
Another research project used transplants to restore memory function in rats.
By implanting a device into the brain of rats, researchers from Wake Forest University in North Carolina, and the University of Southern California have found a way to make the rats remember which lever to push to receive water.
When the device is turned off, the rats couldn’t remember which lever to push, but when researchers turned the device on, the rat’s memory function returned.
Studying dogs with dementia may help scientists develop a treatment for humans with Alzheimer’s or other forms of the disease.
Michael Valenzuela, associate professor at the University of Sydney said that dogs have “many parallels with human dementia in terms of memory loss, disorientation, agitation and also, at the level of pathology, many similarities in terms of Alzheimer plaques building up in the brain.”
If the studies are successful, researchers think they will be able to start human clinical trials for dementia treatments.
There are a few different kinds of dementia, and most of them, like Alzheimer’s disease don’t have a cure.
Another research project used transplants to restore memory function in rats.
By implanting a device into the brain of rats, researchers from Wake Forest University in North Carolina, and the University of Southern California have found a way to make the rats remember which lever to push to receive water.
When the device is turned off, the rats couldn’t remember which lever to push, but when researchers turned the device on, the rat’s memory function returned.