WP: Study Looks Into Roots of Alzheimer's (daydreaming???)

[DeepModem Mom]

Study Looks Into Roots of Alzheimer's
Brain Area for Daydreaming Is Affected
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A09


The brain areas involved in daydreaming, musing and other stream-of-consciousness thoughts appear to be the same regions targeted by Alzheimer's disease, researchers are reporting today in an unusual study that offers new insights into the roots of the deadly illness.

The strong correlation between the two suggests there might be a link between the sort of thinking that people regularly do when not involved in purposeful mental activity and the degenerative disease that is characterized by forgetfulness and dementia, said scientists who conducted the federally funded study.

Randy Buckner, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis, said the implications of the finding are far from clear. It is too early to suggest that daydreaming is dangerous, he said, or that avoiding such musings could affect the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Rather, he and others said, the study adds to the evidence that everyday mental and physical activities play an important role in the course of neurological disease.

"It suggests an avenue between brain activity patterns and Alzheimer's disease that we just hadn't been thinking about," said Buckner, who led the study. "It is going to take some time to understand the relative potential of this link."

Other neuroscientists agreed the work was intriguing -- and joked about its implications....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301226.html

[anotherdrew]

1. they could just say...

they could just say since Alzheimer's occures in the brain, stop using your brains.

[WI Independent]

2. Uh-oh... I seem to have a stream of conciousness...

type thought pattern going pretty much any time I'm awake and not actively doing something requiring mental attention. :)

[proReality]

3. Without daydreaming...

we'd have no progress. That seems to be what the federal government wants for the generations to come.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

17. It's not the "federal government"...

... so much as the GOP. The GOP is against diversity (allowing illegal immigration doesn't count here) in American culture, hence their hatred of the National Endowment for the Arts, minorities, etc... If there is no diversity, then there is no new ideas, and with no new ideas, there are no solutions for problems as they arise. No thinking outside the box allowed, atleast not out of the GOP leadership box.

[truthisfreedom]

4. sounds like SOMEBODY wants us to stop being so creative. hmm. i wonder

who? 8^)

[daleo]

5. People should think about work all the time

There would be no more Alzheimer's, and productivity would go up. It would be win-win.

Signed, Mr Scrooge.

[alfredo]

11. When Judge Colombo sentenced John Sinclair to

10 years for the possession of two joints, he said marijuana was dangerous because it made people think instead of react. The war was raging at that time, what we needed more than anything, people who could think.

[MarkTwain]

6. Unmitigated Bullshit...

... to even remotely suggest such a correlation with this "science" and this "evidence."

See me in about fifty years when Neuro-chemistry/biology and cognitive functionality are firmly mapped, understood, and appreciated.

This is such an amateurish attempt that it must obviously be a verrrrrrry slow news day at the WAPost for some lame ass reporter to have submitted such a piece and offered such a ridiculous suggestion predicated upon such a specious relationship between the neurological regions and the symptoms of a disease process.

[alfredo]

8. Could you repeat that?

I was lost in thought.

[DeepModem Mom]

12. LOL!

[GoddessOfGuinness]

7. Quick! Get the thought police!

[DBoon]

9. I'd heard an early manifestation of Alzheimers is ..

that the sufferer basically has "nothing going on" when they are idle. The thought processes involved in daydreaming and musing just shut off before everything else.

Daydreaming may play an important role in forming memories. Losing that idle mental activity may prevent memories.

[Matilda]

10. Funny - I've often thought that my ability to switch off

and go into a daydream has sometimes saved my sanity in stressful
situations.

Perhaps I'd be better off worrying myself into a heart attack or
a stroke.

[silverweb]

13. That article was a whole lot of nothing.

Pure speculation with absolutely nothing factual behind it. Even the first sentence is qualified by the phrase "appear to be," weakening everything that follows.

Fluffy filler, wasted words, and specious speculation. :eyes:

[Robeson]

14. DON'T . THINK . JUST . DO.......

[Straight Shooter]

15. Engaging in creative mental activity keeps the brain (and mind) healthy.

So, people who sit around in a mental stupor with a vacuum in their thought processes have a better chance of not developing Alzheimer's? I seriously doubt that.

[GoBlue]

16. I'll start worrying when I stop daydreaming. /eom