Assignment two w/ Ashlyn's feedback

8/17/2019 Assignment two w/ Ashlyn's feedback

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Rohdina Harriott

Mrs. Ashlyn-Walden

UWRT 1104

3-12-16

Background Information

The brain is essentially the most significant organ in the body, next to the heart. All of the

amazing memories we make on a daily basis and important information we store away for future

references, all thanks are due to the brain. What happens when it ceases to function and all the

memories we’ve retained gets lost? How do we cope? Who will you remember? Who won’t you

remember? These are all questions following the diagnosis of dementia, more specifically

Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s, often just referred to as Alz, is the 6th leading cause of death in the

United States and for every 67 seconds that passes, one person in the US develops the illness. It

is most common in folks ages 65 and older but can be developed in people younger (Burns,

Alistar, Iliffe, 338:467-471). Alz is a brain disorder that gradually destroys memory and our

ability to think, and ultimately the ability to carry out the simplest of tasks. It is also irreversible,

and patients are left with nothing but treatment that is made to slow the progression. In late

stages of Alz, you lose full function of basic motor skills and loss of function progresses

throughout the entire body, which in turn leads to death.

The reasoning behind my research is to determine what aspect of brain is most responsible

for our memory and the differentiation between normal forgetfulness and forgetting as a result of

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Alzheimer’s. In regards to my study, I plan to gather individuals who are in the early and mid

stages of Alzheimer’s and people who aren’t affected to determine the rate at which they forget

received information and compare them to individuals whose brain are deemed normal.

My connection with this topic is a personal one. My grandmother recently passed from

Alzheimer’s but I was relatively young when she was first diagnosed. Initially the doctors

misdiagnosed her and was taking pills for an illness she did not have. It wasn’t until maybe a 5th

doctor’s visit that they finally did the MRI and realized it was Alzheimer’s. Mind you this took

place in Jamaica a decade ago, and not to say the doctor’s weren’t proficient there but not as

much as the ones in the US. I was around 8 or 9 when I noticed she would act different and often

forget minute things and then the 2 years following she could hardly remember her children and

so I’d say hers progressed quicker than usual as she wasn’t receiving the correct treatment. I

became fascinated with the disease because as I got older I saw what it did to her and knowing I

could not interact with her the same was difficult to accept. Knowing my situation and how I

relate, I will try to refrain from showing any bias in regards to how I approach my study as to

some I may be too emotionally invested in this topic.

Literature Review

It is frustrating and sometimes scary when we find ourselves not being able to remember

certain information. In the short video composed by neuroscientist, Neil Burgess, he explains to

us how we remember things. In the case of trying to remember where we parked in a large

parking lot, the hippocampus comes into play. The hippocampus is located in the temporal lobe


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just a small distance from the center of the brain. Our hippocampus is a form of storage for our

long-term memory and so when damaged, much like what happens to patients with Alzheimer’s,

you forget things like where you parked your car. The neurons that are contained in the

hippocampus sends out shocks as means of communication when we are in a specific place of

our environment. The brain over time gets familiar with our surroundings and marks it on an

individual neuron in the brain much like we do on a map. There are over 100 billion neurons in

the hippocampus and each are responsible for remembering different things so essentially we

know where we are parked or what direction to turn next when we are going home due to those

specific neurons being signaled (Burgess, TEDtalks). The hippocampus does a similar process

when it comes to episodic memories. If you ever find yourself trying to remember a past event in

your life such as your first day of high school, graduation or even the first time you rode a bike,

you’ll not only remember when it occurred but also where it did. This is due to the brain using

special cells within the hippocampus to mark or “geotag” every event in our life (J. Hamilton

“Brain Cells Geotag Memories..”). We typically remember almost every event following the

age of three but not prior and this is said to be due to childhood amnesia. As described by

Sigmund Freud, we try to repress memories from infancy and this was proven throughout a

survey in 1948 by Waldfogel. Waldfogel did an interrogation in which people has to state their

earliest memories throughout their life. There were a series of scarce memories prior to the age

of 8 but no one could recall events before the age of 3 (Eacott, 8:46-49). So for the events we do

remember, the timing of it and location are ultimately fused together by geotagging and this is

actually the same concept of a digital camera when a photo is taken it automatically tags its date,

time and location (J. Hamilton “Brain Cells Geotag Memories..”).


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With Alzheimer’s, we become incapable of remembering anything overtime as the

hippocampus is being viciously attacked. The brain not only loses its ability to process

information but the flow of blood drastically decreases, denying the cells of oxygen and

deterioration of the nerve cells later occur. Amyloid, a type of protein, kills the nerve cells one

by one as it clumps together and turns into plaques. The signaling of the neurons that was talked

about earlier, ultimately comes to a stop which causes the neurons to no longer function as it

should (Healy, 134:23).

Very often people will relate forgetfulness with old age. It is typically a common statement

to hear people say, “I must be getting old” at the event of misplacing an item or lacking the

ability to remember minute things. We all forget things from time to time even with a healthy

brain. In an experiment that was conducted by Eddinghaus in 1855 where he learned a list of

nonsense syllables, that demonstrated the rate at which information is forgotten. After learning

the syllables and being able to repeat without making any errors and testing the amount forgotten

by the method of relearning, shows after 20 minutes 0 percent of the processed information was

forgotten. As the time increased, within an hour more than 55 percent of the information was

forgotten and by the 6th day a whooping 75 percent was no longer remembered. These learning

and forgetting experiments have been repeated various times and the subjects in the experiment

did not report to have poor memories (Fernberger, 56-59).

With the rapid increase of Alzheimer’s, everyone worries at the slightest memory failure

and fear they might suffer from the disease. What we need to understand is that there is a

difference between normal and abnormal memory. It is natural that as we get older, new

information that the brain receives will cause a delay in learning it and the brain starts to retain

less information as opposed to when younger. Not to say someone of an older age can’t have a


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better memory than someone younger than they are but typically as we age, this is what the brain

undergoes. Age related changes in memory differ in many significant ways from the changes in

memory caused by alzheimer’s disease (Albert, 352: 1703-1709). In the “Building a Mystery”

journal (Gaines, Whitehouse, 13:61-74), it talks about applying Mild Cognitive Impairment to

patients. MCI can mean two things, that an individual has early onset Alzheimer’s, one doesn’t

or one will develop. Every form of progressive degenerative dementia symptoms may be

present but not always present enough to diagnose as dementia.

Entering the Conversation

After thoroughly reading through my sources and determining that the hippocampus is the

aspect of the brain in charge of memory loss, I believe more focus should be done on this

specific aspect of the brain for research. Forgetting is normal, it is a part of life though some tend

to have better memories than others, we all forget something whether it may be to return a call,

do an assignment or the name of someone you’ve recently met. It is extremely crucial that the

hippocampus remains healthy for complete function to be carried out. When damaged we can

begin to draw concerns, as it will no longer be just forgetting the name of someone you’ve just

met but the names of those closest to you. But what really occurs with the activity of the

hippocampus when we receive information? How long does it take for the hippocampus to retain

any given information? I believe a study can be designed to demonstrate the rate at which

information is lost between people with Alzheimer’s and people without, while undergoing

functional analysis to monitor the hippocampal activity.

To conduct this study, I would gather (with consent from families) about 16 patients, 8 from

the early stage of Alzheimer’s and 8 from the mid and another 8 individuals who do not suffer


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from any form of dementia. The early stage patients will be between the ages 50 and 60, the mid

stage are between 70 and 80. The ages of the eight people who do not have the disease are 25,

30, 45, 50, 65, 73, 80 and 85. They will all be placed under a functional analysis screening tool

while being asked a series of questions. Each patient will be asked the same 6 memory questions,

ranging from least to most difficult and expected to give their response within a certain time

frame. In order to see how long the memory is retained, we will do 2 minutes from when the

question is asked to receive their answer. This will be repeated three times to see if there are any

changes in answers. The questions that will be asked are as followed:

1. What did you do prior to coming here?

2. What did you have for breakfast this morning?

3. What is your home address? (Street name, town, state, building number, zip code)

4. You will be given the names of five animals that you will be asked to repeat them in the

order they are given: cat, cow, dog, elephant, horse, sheep.

5. What did you do yesterday morning?

6. What was the first question we asked?


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Questions asked Time torespond

Timetaken to

respond

Was theanswer

correct?

Was the answerincorrect?

Did answerchange

throughout any ofthe 3 rounds?

What did you do prior tocoming here?

2 minutes

What did you have for

breakfast this morning?

2 minutes

What is your home address?

(Street name, twon, state, building number, zip code)

2 minutes

You will be given the namesof five animals that you will

be asked to repeat in the

order they are given: cat,

cow, dog, elephant, horse,sheep.

2 minutes

What did you do yesterday

morning?

2 minutes

What was the first question

we asked?

2 minutes

Patients Hippocampal

activity prior to

answer

Hippocampal

Activity while

answering

Hippocampal

Activity post

answering

Was the change

any different

throughout each

round? (images

included)

Early stage

patients Alz (8

patients assessed

individually)

Mid stage AlzPatients (8

patients assessedindividually)

Patients without


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the disease (8 patients assessed

individually)

After the study is conducted and all information is received we will carefully review our

data. We will compare the results from the first round of the study to the third. This will help us

to reach the understanding of the hippocampal activity when affected by Alzheimer’s and when

it isn’t as well as the timing and how long it takes to retain the information. As i’ve stated earlier,

some people tend to have better memories than others, this can also show any significant

differences amongst the hippocampal activity of the 4 people that do not have Alzheimer’s. For

instance why do two people with normal memory, remember things at a different pace.

Conclusion

Our memory is essentially one of our most important tools in life. Almost, if not

everything we do is based off our memory. Our daily routines, such as brushing our teeth, going

to school, to work, eating at specific times are all because we have them stored in an extremely

“sacred” place, that can either make us or break us. It is strange to think how unnoticed the

hippocampus goes when it has such a major job. Alzheimer’s disease slowly damages our

memory while simultaneously deteriorating the brain. We often fear being a victim of such an

unfortunate disease that we begin to question every slight detail we forget. We ask ourselves,

why don’t I remember small details? Could I potentially have this disease? Is this genetic? What


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if I find out when it’s too late? It is natural to forget, we all do it and my research goes further

into differentiating, normal memory and the memory of someone with the illness.

In my research after preparing my study, I believe I may have aided in finding answers

to frequently arising unanswered questions that can prevent progress of the disease or possibly

preventing the disease on a whole. With the questions I formulated while monitoring the activity

of the brain will demonstrate the difference between someone with a normal brain and their

activity as opposed to the patients without a normal brain. The questions were designed to see

the rate at which they answered and if that had any impact on the hippocampal activity whilst

answering. The longer they took to answer may affect changes in activity and we compared them

to those who answered at a much faster rate. During the comparison we can answer questions

pertaining to why it is we forget/remember at different rates. In previous researches that were

held, there were experiments similar where they did rates of how quickly information is

forgotten and I feel my research intertwines with that.

For upcoming studies, I believe we can go further by performing a longitudinal study on

individuals’ hippocampal activity from the time they are born to the age of 65 (the age you are

most likely to develop the disease). We can pay attention to their lifestyle, what they do or don’t

do, any illnesses they may develop throughout their lifetime and so forth. I know this may cause

a problem with ethical issues but it would be essential in answering questions we need in

knowing what major factors causes the disease to develop and how we can drastically slow its

progression.


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Bibliography

Albert, Marilyn S.. “The Ageing Brain: Normal and Abnormal Memory”. Philosophical

Transactions: Biological Sciences 352.1362 (1997): 1703–1709.

(Albert, 352: 1703-1709)

Barnes, R. F., Raskind, M. A., Scott, M. and Murphy, C. (1981), Problems of Families Caring for

Alzheimer Patients: Use of a Support Group. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 29: 80–

85. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-5415.1981.tb01233.x

Burns, Alistair, and Steve Iliffe. “Alzheimer's Disease”. BMJ: British Medical Journal 338.7692

(2009): 467–471. Web...

Eacott, Madeline J.. “Memory for the Events of Early Childhood”. Current Directions in

Psychological Science 8.2 (1999): 46–49.

Fernberger, Samuel W. "How We Remember." The Scientific Monthly 39.00963771 (1934): 56-59.

JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.


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Gaines, Atwood D., and Peter J. Whitehouse. "Building a Mystery: Alzheimer's Disease, Mild

Cognitive Impairment, and Beyond." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 13.1 (2006): 61-74.

Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Hamilton, John. "Brain Cells 'Geotag' Memories To Cache What Happened - And Where." NPR.

NPR, 28 Nov. 2013. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Hamilton, J. (2015, July 21). Women's Brains Appear More Vulnerable To Alzheimer's Than Men's.

Retrieved March 12, 2016, from http://www.npr.org/sections/health-

shots/2015/07/21/425054345/womens-brains-appear-more-vulnerable-to-alzheimers-than-mens

Healy, Bernadine. "Pumping The Neurons." U.S. News & World Report 134.23 (2003): 29.

Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Mar. 2016.

Neil Burgess: How Your Brain Tells You Where You Are. Dir. Neil Burgess. Perf. Neil Burgess.

TED Talks. TEDSalon, Nov. 2011. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Schuff, N., N. Woerner, L. Boreta, T. Kornfield, L. M. Shaw, J. Q. Trojanowski, P. M. Thompson,

C. R. Jack, and M. W. Weiner. "MRI of Hippocampal Volume Loss in Early Alzheimer's


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Disease in Relation to ApoE Genotype and Biomarkers." Brain 132.4 (2008): 1067-077. Web. 09

Feb. 2016

Wilson, Robert S., and David A. Bennett. “Cognitive Activity and Risk of Alzheimer's Disease”.

Current Directions in Psychological Science 12.3 (2003): 87–91. Web..

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Assignment two w/ Ashlyn's feedback