
Flashing Light, Sound Restore Memory in Alzheimer's Mice - obeone
https://www.laboratoryequipment.com/article/2019/03/flashing-light-sound-restore-memory-alzheimers-mice
======
jkingsman
If you feel like bad science and poorly supported practices are up your alley,
I build a Chrome extension to flash an overlay on your browser at specifiable
frequencies:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gammaloid/lfmaoakh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gammaloid/lfmaoakhbbgeckaogljdkahbfkpkdapg?hl=en-
US)

~~~
whymauri
You may want to justify why it is "bad science" and write a letter to the
editor of Nature and Nature Protocols. Is the media interpretation of these
studies misguided? Sure, but the popular science media is not doing the
science.

I would be peeved if people called my research "bad science" because some pop.
sci. article doesn't understand it.

~~~
fao_
Nature is hardly the top of the crust these days with regards to academic
oversight.

I can recall quite easily that a while back they published an article
confirming ESP, and then refused to publish a replication of the same paper
stating no results.

Because the first one sells issues and the second one doesn't.

~~~
mattkrause
Nature does love flashy stories but the ESP stuff wasn’t them, it was JPSP.

Here’s the citation: Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental
evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(3), 407-425.
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0021524](http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0021524)

Nature did publish a thing on “water memory” in the 1980s. To their (partial)
credit, it was published with an editorial pointing out how unlikely the
findings were.

~~~
fao_
Thank you for the correction! :)

------
josephby
Mice _clap_ don’t _clap_ get _clap_ Alzheimer’s.

They have neural plaques, artificially, chemically induced, that are
coincident with Alzheimer’s in humans.

~~~
existencebox
I don't know why this is being downvoted as much as it is.

Wife works in a related field of neuro-sci, and regularly laments this
difference, especially how it's played up in both in reporting and in assuming
consistency in treatment and response. To the best of my knowledge there's not
even consensus that plaques are the "root cause" we should be focusing on, so
this sort of model may be multiple steps removed from applicability. (Similar
problems exist even in 'more well understood' neurological systems, e.g. early
vision pipeline)

It's an unfortunate but very real limitation to the current research that I
think is important to understand so as to be realistic about the progress and
directions of study. To be very precise, I say this as someone who, both of of
scientific interest, and selfish interest (Alzheimers in my family) loves that
this research is happening.

~~~
mattkrause
> plaques are the "root cause

The amyloid hypothesis has been pretty popular for ~25 years, and it's pretty
clear that the plaques have _something_ to do with Alzheimers, but it's been a
absolute disaster as a treatment target. It feels very much like treating a
fever by slathering the patient in antiperspirant.

Biogen announced this morning that they're giving up on Phase III trials of
aducanumab, an antibody that was supposed to target and remove the plaques
(their stock is doing...badly as a result).
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-biogen-
alzheimers/biogen-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-biogen-
alzheimers/biogen-eisai-scrap-alzheimer-drug-trials-idUSKCN1R213G)

There were two other big failures last year here too, as this nice little
Nature News piece describes:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4)

------
melling
There was a RadioLab special on this a few years ago:

[https://www.wnyc.org/story/flashing-light-therapy-
alzheimers...](https://www.wnyc.org/story/flashing-light-therapy-alzheimers/)

~~~
pmoriarty
After hearing this intriguing RadioLab episode some months back, I started
searching around youtube for 40 Hz tones and found quite a lot of videos of
all kinds that use those and other tones allegedly related to various brain
waves (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc).

I listened to a whole bunch of these videos, and while I wasn't measuring my
memory, I did pay close attention to how the sounds made me feel, and this one
particular made me feel strangest: [1]. Unfortunately, the sound fades in and
out and the effect goes with it. I wish it could have had stayed at a steady
volume so that the effect could be sustained. If you watch it, just ignore the
cheesy graphics and listen.

Here are some other interesting ones: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]

Video [3] is actually supposedly 40 Hz.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eTVW8VMRQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eTVW8VMRQ)

[2] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG22hV-
gMsY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG22hV-gMsY)

[3] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGHbKWGgH_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGHbKWGgH_E)

[4] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhZPMTpW-
gg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhZPMTpW-gg)

[5] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-yz8l4Do-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-yz8l4Do-U)

[6] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lN3X5qVoqQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lN3X5qVoqQ)

~~~
louthy
[3] is definitely not 40hz. 40hz is in the sub-bass range, which this clearly
isn't. I'm not at home in my studio right now, so I can't measure what it is,
but if I was to guess it would be around 200hz.

The ones that are 20hz might make you feel a bit weird because there's not
much amateur audio equipment that would do anything other than distort at that
low end of the frequency range.

It does say binaural though, so maybe it's panning left/right at 40hz rather
than playing a sound-wave at 40hz. If that's the case it's not the same as
what the article states: "40 hertz tone".

Here's an online tone generator [1] that will play a sine-wave at 40hz.

[1] [https://www.szynalski.com/tone-
generator/](https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/)

~~~
roywiggins
A lot of the binaural stuff try to set up "beats" by playing a slightly
different frequency to each ear. Neither frequency is 40Hz, but the beat
frequency may be.

There's an absolute shedload of woo-woo stuff on the purported consciousness-
enhancing benefits if you google around. That's not to say they definitely
don't do funny things to your brain.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)#Binaural_beat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_\(acoustics\)#Binaural_beats)

~~~
duskwuff
> There's an absolute shedload of woo-woo stuff on the purported
> consciousness-enhancing benefits if you google around.

Oh god, yes, and it isn't even new. Back around 2005, I ran into a web site
selling audio files which they claimed would cure addictions, attract romantic
partners, improve luck...

~~~
joezydeco
And, twenty years before that, this group claimed that binaural
"synchronization" of the hemispheres of the brain could lead to out-of-body
travel.

[https://www.monroeinstitute.org/](https://www.monroeinstitute.org/)

I think they've backed down on some of those claims over the last 30 years,
but they'll be happy to take your money for a 5 day onsite retreat.

------
trhway
>exposed laboratory mice that genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's disease
to a light flickering at 40 hertz for one hour a day. They found that this
treatment reduced the levels of tau and amyloid beta in visual cortex of the
brain and stimulated the activity of debris-clearing immune cells.

does it mean that old CRT TVs and monitors kept our Alzheimer at bay?

~~~
dwighttk
weren't fluorescent lights 40Hz?

~~~
ridgeguy
Older fluorescent lights (those run off a magnetic current limiter, or
"ballast") flickered at 120Hz if they were connected to a 60Hz power source.
Every time the voltage declined below a level needed to maintain a discharge,
the lamp went out. That happened twice in every full sine wave of primary
power.

Whether you could see the flicker depended on the phosphor luminous decay
time. If the phosphors on the inside of the bulb (which glow when excited by
the UV-rich plasma discharge) had a rapid luminous decay curve, you could
perceive the 120Hz flicker if you scanned your eyes across a lit bulb. The
afterimage on your retina was a dashed line, the dark parts being the "too
little voltage" portions of the sine wave.

You can use the afterimage trick to check out duty cycle dimming of car tail
and brake lights. If they're chopped slower than ~1KHz, the smeared retinal
afterimage will be chopped. Don't do this if you're moving in traffic.

~~~
vokep
Yep! I do this in traffic when bored...not when moving tho, just sitting in
stop and go traffic. Its interesting to see the different patterns, doesn't
seem to be much consistency to the pulse width they have.

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sesteel
People have already tried to reproduce results in humans, here is one such
study:

    
    
      https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijad/2018/6852303/
    

I am unaware of any successful results.

------
c0nducktr
I've heard people talk about binaural beats before, but always brushed it off
as pseudoscience.

> The noninvasive treatment induces brain waves called gamma oscillations.

Is this true? Does anyone have a link that explains these brain wave patterns
in layman's terms? What exactly is happening to my brain when listening to
these sounds?

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outworlder
So, was The Lawnmower Man ahead of its time?

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pbhjpbhj
This effect has been on here before, some people have had incredible effects
with this. I've relatives who've (had) Alzheimer's, it seems worth following a
"cleaning cycle" every now and again even if results aren't proven as it seems
there is no evidence of harmful effects either.

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herf
I didn't know if treatments targeting amyloid directly would improve memory,
but this tests both in one study, which is pretty great--big effects on memory
and amyloid plaques.

Also, I think Ruth Benca at UCI can measure amyloid levels in humans using
high-resolution EEG.

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wiggler00m
Sonic the Hedgehog knows what's up.

------
aantix
I would love to try this at home, but would have no means of measuring whether
it reduced the plaques..

