Disorders

• Alzheimer's disease


  Irreversible, slowly progressing neurodegenerative disease that eventually ends in death
• Familial AD


  10% of cases, 50 - 60, caused by genetic factors
• Sporadic AD


  Caused mostly by a combination of genetics, risk, and old age
• Apolioprotein epsilon 4 (ApoE4) is the gene mutation that makes you 12x more likely to develop AD
• Cholinergic hypothesis


  Suggests that it's a loss of these neurons and acetylcholine production that is the main pathological of AD
• AChE inhibitors are most of the FDA-approved AD drugs, but they only work short term and wear off quickly
• AD is characterized by the accumulation of amyloid beta plaques and intracellular hyperphosphorylated neurofibrillary tau tangles (NFT)
• Amyloid cascade hypothesis


  Abeta is produced from the cleavage of amyloid-precursor proteins. It clumps together and forms plaques which kill neurons and lead to cognitive deficits of AD (but there is more than just that)
• Tau protein


  Microtubule-associate protein (MAP) of neurons that helps them maintain their cellular morphology
• Too much tau phosphorylation causes it to accumulate and cause neuronal death, and is also correlated with abeta plaques
• Korsakoff's disorder


  Disorder resulting from a severe deficiency of thiamine usually caused from alcohol overconsumtion leading to inabilities to absorb it properly. It causes retrograde and anterograde amnesia and severly impaired short-term memory. It can be treated with supplements and if it's caught within a few days a patient can make a full recovery
• Confabulation


  An "honest lie" made usually because a person is trying to compensate for retrograde amnesia and doesn't know they're not telling the truth. Happens usually with autobiographical memories and not semantic or procedural
• 2.88 million people in America got hospitalized with a traumatic brain injury in 2014
• Traumatic brain injury


  Most common form of brain damage, usually from something like a car crash or fall
• Concussion


  Mild form of TBI with symptoms like nausea, dizziness, vomiting, or loss of consciousness
• The coup is when the brain hits the part of the skull where impact was made, the contrecoup is when the brain bounces off and smashes into the opposite side of the skull. This triggers the immune system hard (axonal stretching, microglial activation, and immune response) that messes with the reverberation process involved in creating memories, which is why some people with TBIs experience memory loss of the incident
• The best known treatment for a traumatic brain injury is rest
• Savant syndrome


  People with "islands of genius" that are superhuman. Really rare but 1 in 10 autistic people have it. Can also be acquired from TBIs, like Orlando Serrell who was hit in the head with a baseball and got perfect autobiographical memory, or Derek Amato who got crazy musical talents after a car crash