Physiological Psychology Course Blog

https://neurosciencenews.com/sleep-waste-clearing-10826/ Alzheimer's Disease is a form of dementia that increases with age.  This disease can be identified by memory loss, confusion, disorientation, etc.  The article explains how sleep deprivation can be a primary factor in whether or not an individual were to develop Alzheimer's.  When we sleep, our glymphatic system pumps cerebral spinal fluid throughout the brain, which washes away the waste in our brain.  This process occurs during deep non-REM sleep, because this sleep phase involves firing neurons from the front of the brain to the back.  The chemicals that are involved with the firing of neurons (sodium, potassium, and organic ions) as we have learned in class, drive osmosis which in turn enables the brain fluid to be dispersed throughout the brain.  If we do not get enough sleep, specifically deep sleep, the glymphatic system cannot cleanse the brain of harmful toxins involved in cognitive dysfunc...

https://neurosciencenews.com/mitochondria-alzheimers-10744/   Alzheimer’s is a debilitating disease that researchers have been studying in attempts to both understand possible causes and to generate possible treatments. A newly published study from an international team of researchers uncovered information that has potentially illuminated one of the causes, while simultaneously providing a promising treatment, for Alzheimer’s disease. According to these scientists, the brain has a natural cleaning process that aids in preventing an accumulation (i.e., mitophagy) of defective mitochondria in brain cells. If the mitophagy is insufficient to combat the accumulation of potentially harmful and defective mitochondria, Alzheimer’s symptoms can be present in the brain. This poorly functioning cleaning system—with accompanying Alzheimer’s symptoms—has been observed in both humans and animals. Although researchers have not yet tested a cleaning process for these damaged mitochondria...