Alzheimer’s Causes & Human Brain Animation: Amyloids
Zoom into the human brain and search the neuron forest for causes of Alzheimer’s disease. Learn about research into treatment options. Explore The Emergent Universe, an online interactive science museum about emergence.
Zoom In & Search for a Cure
You’re a medical researcher facing a growing epidemic. More than 5 million people* are suffering from a fatal illness that robs them of their memories and their minds. And every 71 seconds* someone else will develop this devastating disease: Alzheimer’s.
Over the last 2 decades research conducted across many disciplines, from epidemiology to physics, has dramatically expanded our understanding of this protein aggregation disease, providing hope that a cure can be found.
But time is short!
Zoom into the brain to join the search for a cure!
*US statistics, 2008
What’s Emergence Got to Do with It?
What causes proteins that exist in all of us to behave like renegades in some of us, forming aggregates and causing diseases like Alzheimer’s? Figuring out how the interactions between these proteins generate renegade behavior is a problem in emergence, and solving such emergent problems requires a transdisciplinary approach.
Understanding Alzheimer’s has required combining knowledge from many areas, from epidemiology, which uncovered forms of Alzheimer’s that run in families, and genetics, which identified the rogue genes in those families and the proteins affected by those genes, to physical chemistry, which is revealing the structure and aggregation behavior of these proteins.
Component parts – proteins
Emergent phenomenon – amyloid fibrils
Overall Emergent phenomenon – amyloid disease pathology