Why Do Some Brains Resist Alzheimer's Completely?…

Why Do Some Brains Resist Alzheimer's Completely? Scientists May Be Getting Closer to an Answer Roughly 30% of older adults who develop the biological changes of Alzheimer's disease never actually experience its symptoms. Their brains show the same pathology, yet their memory and cognition remain intact. This has remained one of the biggest unanswered mysteries in Alzheimer's research. A new study published in Cell Stem Cell, from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, may be offering the first real clues. Could resilient brains simply be better at repairing themselves, specifically, by generating new neurons to replace damaged ones? This relates to a long-debated question in neuroscience: adult neurogenesis, the process by which new neurons form in the adult brain. While well documented in many animal species, scientists have long disagreed about how much, if any, occurs in humans. Researchers examined donated brain tissue from the Netherlands Brain Bank across three groups: healthy individuals, people who developed Alzheimer's dementia, and a particularly interesting third group: people whose brains showed Alzheimer's pathology, yet who nev