03 Preserve Your Memory

Memory loss is a particularly demoralising area of brain science, in which proposed solutions have failed time and time again.

The Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation created a database of drugs evaluated by neuroscientists called the Cognitive Vitality ratings. (Find it at alzdiscovery.org/cognitive-vitality.) It lists a wide range of purported memory boosters, such as rapamycin, citicoline, and huperzine A, which can be sorted by their benefits, their safety and how much evidence there is for their effectiveness. But the foundation’s main recommendations for preventing Alzheimer’s remain to sleep well, eat a Mediterranean-style diet, maintain social ties, lower stress, use your brain in new ways and exercise.

A more sci-fi option, however, may be on the way. Cognito Therapeutics, a company building on research conducted at MIT, is studying the use of light and sound to treat Alzheimer’s. By using these stimuli to evoke gamma waves in the brain, they’ve seen the type of activated immune response that can reduce plaques common in the disease. Cognito has launched three randomised clinical studies in people with Alzheimer’s and has seen positive results.