Alzheimer's and Rose Hip Neurons

The scene could have been part of an I Love Lucy episode.  Me, my sister, our daughters, everyone in the house were frantically looking for Sis’s lost wallet.  We were gathered to celebrate my oldest niece’s graduation.  But now, it was time to get the cake from the baker and Sis could not find her wallet. In the eye of the storm, my mother sat on her favorite kitchen chair, drinking coffee from her favorite mug and offering morality lessons on how if people would just “have a place for everything and everything in its place” the wallet would not be lost. 

Mom had recently come to live with Sis because of compounding health problems.  The fact that Sis had taken Mom in is all the proof needed that my sister is a saint.  Had Mom come to live with me things would have ended in a murder/suicide. 

Sis and I finally headed for the bakery.  I would pay for the cake and restitution would be made later.  There was plenty for everyone else to do in the meantime. 

Mother kept sipping her coffee.

By the time we got home the wallet had been found.  When my nieces had gotten on with the rest of the food prep one of them opened the pantry and had found my sister’s wallet, resting on top of the flour cannister! 

It turns out that Mom had put the wallet there because she didn’t like it sitting in the middle of the table and wanted to keep it safe! 

My mother did not have Alzheimer’s.  She did suffer from dementia, but it was brought on by a series of strokes.  Strokes run in my family.  Alzheimer’s does not.  My husband’s family, unfortunately, did get that ugly little card in life’s poker hand.

Alzheimer’s disease is a rotten curse on humanity.  It starts with a seemingly innocuous, even amusing run of “slips.”  Then the miscues, the forgetfulness, the mood swings start clustering together like beads on a rosary.  It isn’t that there is an immediate loss of quality of life, but there is that click, as if a stop watch has been tripped, and life is suddenly on a timer. 

But there is help coming.   Enter the “rose hip neuron.”  No, I am not talking about an herbal tea.  Rose hip neurons are a type of brain cell that exists only in humans.  They are inhibitor cells, meaning their job is to put the brakes on certain brain activities and control the flow of information.

These cells were discovered by an international team of researchers and so named because of their shape, reminiscent of a rose after the petals fall off.  Researchers where working independently in Hungary and Seattle and, upon learning of the interface of information, started cooperating on the advanced study. 

These scientists were not looking for a new cell.  They were trying to understand why treatments of brain disorders that worked in mice did not always work in humans. The assumption has always been that mouse brains are simply smaller versions of our own.  Not so.  Human brains are unique. 

This research and all that it has discovered grows, in part, out of the BRAIN Initiative announced by President Obama in 2013.  It shows what can be done when time and money are devoted to a specific (not general) cause.  It is why STEM initiatives are crucial to improving the lives of everyone.  Sometimes you stumble on something you weren’t looking for.  But chance favors the prepared mind (Thomas A. Edison). 

            For right now, go out and make some memories and keep the faith.