Simple smell test can help identify those at Alzheimer’s risk

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in the US have developed a method to identify those at risk for Alzheimer’s disease on the basis of their ability to recognise and recall odours.

The non-invasive protocol testing the ability to recognise, remember and distinguish between odours was able to identify older individuals who -- according to genetic, imaging and more detailed memory tests -- were at increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, the study said.

“There is increasing evidence that the neurodegeneration behind Alzheimer’s disease starts at least 10 years before the onset of memory symptoms,” said principal investigator Mark Albers of the MGH Department of Neurology. 

“The development of a digitally-enabled, affordable, accessible and non-invasive means to identify healthy individuals who are at risk is a critical step to developing therapies that slow down or halt Alzheimer’s disease progression,” Albers noted.

It is well known that brain circuits that process olfactory information can be affected by Alzheimer’s disease, and several studies have documented a diminished ability to identify odours in affected individuals. 

The study recruited 183 participants, most of whom were enrolled in ongoing studies at the MGH-based Massachusetts Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. 

At the time of the olfactory testing, 70 were cognitively normal, 74 tested normal on cognitive tests but were personally concerned about their cognitive abilities, 29 had mild cognitive impairment and 10 had been diagnosed with possible or probable Alzheimer’s disease. 

Results of the test significantly differentiated among the four groups of participants, and those results correlated with the thinning of two brain regions -- the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex -- previously associated with Alzheimer’s risk. 

The researchers also found that participants’ ability to remember a previously presented aroma also showed significant differences between the two cognitively normal groups and participants with Alzheimer’s disease, whose results were no better than chance.
Poor performers in the memory test were more likely to have the variant of the APOE gene associated with increased Alzheimer’s risk, said the study published online in the journal Annals of Neurology.

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Sleep after learning boosts memory

A new study has revealed that sleep after learning strengthens connections between brain cells and enhances memory.

Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have shown for the first time that sleep after learning encourages the growth of dendritic spines, the tiny protrusions from brain cells that connect to other brain cells and facilitate the passage of information across synapses, the junctions at which brain cells meet.

Moreover, the activity of brain cells during deep sleep, or slow-wave sleep, after learning is critical for such growth.

The findings, in mice, provide important physical evidence in support of the hypothesis that sleep helps consolidate and strengthen new memories, and show for the first time how learning and sleep cause physical changes in the motor cortex, a brain region responsible for voluntary movements.

"We've known for a long time that sleep plays an important role in learning and memory. If you don't sleep well you won't learn well," senior investigator Wen-Biao Gan, PhD, professor of neuroscience and physiology and a member of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, said.

"But what's the underlying physical mechanism responsible for this phenomenon? Here we've shown how sleep helps neurons form very specific connections on dendritic branches that may facilitate long-term memory. We also show how different types of learning form synapses on different branches of the same neurons, suggesting that learning causes very specific structural changes in the brain," the researcher said.

On the cellular level, sleep is anything but restful: Brain cells that spark as we digest new information during waking hours replay during deep sleep, also known as slow-wave sleep, when brain waves slow down and rapid-eye movement, as well as dreaming, stops.

Scientists have long believed that this nocturnal replay helps us form and recall new memories, yet the structural changes underpinning this process have remained poorly understood.

The study is published in the journal Science. 

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Smell may shape human memories

Scents and smells can form the basis of some of the most significant memories humans form in their lives, a new study suggests.

The discovery may provide a means to detect early problems with memory formation and memory retrieval in the brain, researchers said.

An international team led by University of Queensland has boosted understanding of the smell-memory connection, showing that olfactory memory in honeybees regulates receptors in their antennae.

Bees' antennae function like a human nose, said Queensland Brain Institute scientists Dr Judith Reinhard and Associate Professor Charles Claudianos.

"French novelist Marcel Proust in his novel Remembrance of Things Past (also known as In Search of Lost Time) described how his childhood memories started to flow when he tasted a madeleine cake dipped in linden tea, as he had been given as a child," Reinhard said.

"Our team found that odour memories trigger recall of associated events, and that long-term odour memory formation in the brain regulates the sense of smell in the 'nose' via regulating the receptor molecules," Reinhard said.

"Preferences for different foods and beverages are linked to our sense of smell, and our research shows that long-term scent memories modify how odours are perceived," said Reinhard.

"In a nutshell: our smell experiences shape our preferences," she added.

"The study demonstrates for the first time that the ability to smell different things is experience-dependent and modulated by scent conditioning," said Reinhard.

Claudianos said the findings could help explain the wide variability of smell perception in humans and the neurological mechanism underlying the common phenomenon of "acquired taste", where repeated sensory experience with a flavour or aroma leads to perceptual changes.

"This knowledge will provide an enormous insight for understanding food and aroma perception," he said.

"The discovery may also provide a means to detect early problems with memory formation and memory retrieval in the brain," said Claudianos.

Individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia or neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease often have an altered sense of smell perception, researchers said.

The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

SUMMARYDiscovery may provide a means to detect early problems with memory formation, memory retrieval in brain.

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Search like a bee for good memory

Those with the best memory foraging strategies are better at recalling things.

New research finds that people move from one patch of memory to another in a manner similar to that of bees flitting between flowers for pollen or birds searching for berries in bushes. This suggests that people with the best memory foraging strategies are better at recalling items. Be cause of the way human attention has evolved, the scientists wondered if humans use the same strategies to forage in memory. For e.g., when hunting for animals in memory, most people start with a patch of household pets like cat, dog & hamster. But then as this patch becomes depleted, they look elsewhere. They might then alight to another semantically distinct patch like predatory animals.

Scientists asked people to name as many animals as they could in 3 minutes & compared these results with a classic model of optimal foraging, the marginal value theorem, which predicts how long animals will stay in one patch before jumping to another. Researchers said, being able to search memory effectively would be an educational advantage. Here, knowing when to give up one attempted solution & try something new is the question that a good mind must be trained to answer. Simply trying a failing solution repeatedly is like the bird that keeps foraging in the patch, even after all the berries are gone.