Alzheimer’s and The Hollywood Celebrity

by Rose Broyles

Time recently published an interesting article regarding the effect recognizing celebrities might have on an alzheimer’s sufferer. Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic  claim to have found a way to find out which people are at risk before symptoms develop by just asking if they recognize celebrities. What they discovered is that when  these people try to recognize the celebrities’ pictures their brains work differently.  By doing MRI tests, the researchers were able to document the changes in brain activity.

The study, conducted by brain imaging specialist Stephen Rao found that the high-risk test subjects (who were shown celebrity pics)  showed high levels of activity in the hippocampus,posterior cingulate and regions of the frontal cortex which are all responsible for memory. The other control group showed heightened activity when they were shown unrecognizable names. The high-risk subjects tried harder to recognize the celebrities; they did this by trying to compensate for already damaged or non-functioning neurons. In both groups, pictures of the brain designed to pick up structural changes associated with dementia were not found yet. This was a significant part of the study because  it means that researchers were able to detect dysfunction even before clinical symptoms began to show. This is something that is promising for future study.

Rao believes that imaging studies can help to identify those most vulnerable to cognitive decline so they can participate in clinical trials of new drugs designed to postpone or reduce symptoms. “If we can delay the onset of Alzheimer‘s by five years,” he says, “by some estimates we can cut the incidence of Alzheimer’s in half. If we can delay the disease by 10 years, we could almost eliminate it because people would die from other conditions first.”

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