Saying goodbye to Lizzie G
I have loved boats all of my life. When I was a small boy, my father and my great-uncle Fred taught me how to row and sail in a small dinghy. I was in awe of...
Category: Alzheimer’s disease
Re-imaging my brain in San Francisco
In 2015 and again in 2018, I travelled to San Francisco to be a volunteer in a study of a then experimental PET scan for abnormal tau protein in the brain using a radioactive...
Neuroplasticity and Alzheimer’s
This morning I read a fascinating article published yesterday in the New York Times by Helen Santoro, “The Curious Hole in my Head.” Ms. Santoro had some worrying neurological findings at birth prompting a brain scan. This...
Disappointing results of two human trials of monoclonal antibodies in Parkinson’s disease
Like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease is a progressive, neurodegenerative disorder that involves deposits of an abnormal protein in the brain. In Alzheimer’s disease, these abnormal proteins are extracellular beta-amyloid and intraneuronal hyperphosphorylated tau. In Parkinson’s...
Back to the San Juan and Gulf Islands
Sailing with my friends Henry and John on a chartered sailboat has been an annual treat since 1999. We missed out in 2020 because of Covid, and in 2021 we could not cross over from...
Surprisingly good news about the acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (donepezil, rivastigmine, and galantamine)
When I first started practicing neurology in 1989, there were absolutely no medications that mitigated cognitive deterioration in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. There were drugs for some of the unwanted symptoms like sleep reversal,...
The amyloid hypothesis is not dead, but it may be gasping for breath
The amyloid hypothesis has been the dominant theory for the cause of Alzheimer’s disease for over 20 years. In brief, the theory holds that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by accumulation of beta-amyloid that damages...
My photographs in 1978 and 2022
In 1978, I was in the fifth year of the six-year Medical Scientist Training Program leading to MD and PhD degrees at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a rigorous program, but I...
A second read of Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer’s Disease
While enjoying the July 4th holiday on the Oregon Coast with my family this weekend, I reread Thomas DeBaggio’s memoir of his early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. It was published in 2000, two years after his diagnosis...
Negative results from the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative’s (API) Colombian study
So far, several trials of anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies have failed to provide unequivocal evidence of reversing or even slowing cognitive decline in subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or mild Alzheimer’s dementia, despite marked...
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