Dementia Arts Mapping: observational methods for documenting impacts of poetry and recreation in care settings.

Background: Long-term care homes for older and disabled adults, including those who are living with dementia, facilitate a diversity of recreational activities and program as social interventions. The relationships between interventional elements and participant impacts are not well understood.

Methods: This paper explores a poetry methodology and reports the findings from a pilot test of Dementia Arts Mapping, a novel ethnographic observational technique, to better understand impacts of poetry and recreation on people living with dementia in long-term care settings.

Nilotinib Improves Bioenergetic Profiling in Brain Astroglia in the 3xTg Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease.

Current treatments targeting amyloid beta in Alzheimer's disease (AD) have minimal efficacy, which results in a huge unmet medical need worldwide. Accumulating data suggest that brain mitochondrial dysfunction play a critical role in AD pathogenesis. Targeting cellular mechanisms associated with mitochondrial dysfunction in AD create a novel approach for drug development.

Deciphering the neuroprotective and neurogenic potential of soluble amyloid precursor protein alpha (sAPPα).

Amyloid precursor protein (APP) is a transmembrane protein expressed largely within the central nervous system. Upon cleavage, it does not produce the toxic amyloid peptide (Aβ) only, which is involved in neurodegenerative progressions but via a non-amyloidogenic pathway it is metabolized to produce a soluble fragment (sAPPα) through α-secretase. While a lot of studies are focusing on the role played by APP in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, sAPPα is reported to have numerous neuroprotective effects and it is being suggested as a candidate with possible therapeutic potential against Alzheimer's disease.

Secreted amyloid precursor protein alpha activates neuronal insulin receptors and prevents diabetes-induced encephalopathy.

Secreted amyloid precursor protein alpha (sAPPα) is a potent neurotrophin in the CNS but a dedicated receptor has not been found. However, protein interactions involving amyloid beta (Aβ), a peptide cleaved from the same parent peptide as sAPPα, indicate that insulin receptors (IRs) could be a target of amyloid peptides. In this study, in vitro analysis of cortical neuronal cultures revealed that exogenous sAPPα increased IR phosphorylation in the absence of insulin.