Memory and Cognitive Health

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Administration for Community Living (ACL) are collaborating to host a webinar series with the goals of 1) improving coordination of federal resources available to assist people with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias and their family caregivers and 2) encouraging awareness of research participation opportunities.

The human brain is made up of tens of billions of neurons, brain cells that act as information messengers, transmitting and receiving chemical and electrical signals. These messages are received by branch-like cell structures called dendrites after traveling across synapses, the tiny gap between neurons. Now, researchers in NIA’s Intramural Research Program have shown in mice that a protein, PGC-1alpha, may play an important role in forming and maintaining healthy dendrites and synapses in the hippocampus--the brain region important to learning and memory.

Posiphen, a drug candidate designed and developed by researchers in the NIA’s Intramural Research Program, has been shown in three small, early studies to be well-tolerated and to reduce the generation of amyloid and tau protein—the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease—in older people at risk for developing the disorder.