Some regions of the brain in people with Alzheimer’s reorganize more often while at rest than in people without the disease––and in healthy people this frequent reshuffling sometimes predicts who will develop the condition later, according to a new study from the University of Michigan and Columbia University.
Some regions of the brain in people with Alzheimer’s reorganize more often while at rest than in people without the disease––and in healthy people this frequent reshuffling sometimes predicts who will develop the condition later, according to a new study from the University of Michigan and Columbia University.
The brain’s ability to reorganize various regions is called neural flexibility, says Eleanna Varangis, assistant professor at the U-M School of Kinesiology and first author of the study, which appears in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
“Our brain is always organizing and reorganizing regions into different functional networks in order to make sure it has the resources it needs to complete a variety of cognitive tasks,” said Varangis, who is also a member of the Michigan Concussion Center. “We found that in Alzheimer’s disease the brain tends to reorganize more frequently.
“Overall, our paper suggests that we can use information about the way our brain organizes into functional networks to possibly help identify whether or not someone has Alzheimer’s disease.”
Read More: University of Michigan
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