Alzheimer’s cure hope after chance brain surgery find
Scientists hope they can use the development as a potential cure for Alzheimer’s disease.
Experts using deep brain stimulation surgery on a 50-year-old obese man, hoping to suppress his appetite, instead found the procedure appeared to stimulate his memory.
They are testing the same technique on patients with Alzheimer’s in a trial which, if successful, could give hope to sufferers with the degenerative condition.
Research leader Andres Lozano, professor of neurosurgery at the Toronto Western Hospital in Ontario, Canada, said three Alzheimer’s patients had already been treated with promising results. The study, published by the Annals of Neurology, said the surprise discovery was made during an experimental study on a morbidly obese patient.
Brain surgery was a last resort after all other attempts to restrict the appetite of the patient, who has a history of obesity and weighs 192kg, had failed.
Researchers had been identifying potential appetite suppressant sites in the hypothalamus part of the brain using electrode implants when the patient had a feeling of déjà vu.
The man recalled in detail a memory from 30 years earlier, and as the intensity of the current increased so did the detail of the memory. The study said: “He reported the experience of being in a park with friends from when he was around 20-years-old.
“He recognised his girlfriend... The scene was in colour,” it said.
After three weeks of continuous hypothalamic stimulation, the patient also showed significant improvements in two learning tests.
Prof Lozano, a world authority on deep-brain stimulation, said: “It gives us an insight into which brain structures are involved in memory.”
