WEBVTT

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- When I'm stuck on a problem,
music can transport me

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into realms that
help me solve it

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as if my right brain is
helping my left brain come out

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of a ditch so that they
can work on it together.

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I'm Karen Ashe,
professor of neurology

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at the University of
Minnesota and the director

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of the N. Bud Grossman Center
for Memory Research and Care,

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and I'm also the CEO of
a company called Myriel.

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I went to medical
school at Harvard

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and in my third or fourth year,

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I went into the library and
looked at different journals.

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I knew that I needed to pick
a profession whose journals

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that I would enjoy reading
for the rest of my career.

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And I loved the neurology
journals and I thought,

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"Wow, this is so neat."

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When I was a resident in
neurology 40 years ago,

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one of my teachers told
me that the diseases

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that caused dementia are
waste basket diseases.

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Neurologists love to
classify diseases according

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to their causes and put them
neatly into filing cabinets

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but we couldn't do
that with dementia

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because we didn't
know what caused them.

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People can get dementia
as they get older.

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Dementia is what results
when certain aspects

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of mentation break down, aspects
like memory and language,

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abstract thinking,
behaving appropriately,

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doing calculations, having
a sense of direction.

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Alzheimer's disease is the
most common form of dementia.

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It's one of many
forms of dementia.

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We are studying mentation
and how it goes wrong.

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We all have millions of memories

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and they're like
metaphorical light bulbs.

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Our brains can strengthen
and weaken memories

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by increasing and decreasing
electrical activity,

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and we've found a
molecule called caspase-2

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that decreases electrical
signals and weakens memories.

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We need caspase-2 normally,

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because we can't handle millions
of memories all at once,

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just as we wouldn't want all
the lights on all the time.

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But the problem in
Alzheimer's disease

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is that caspase-2
is on overdrive,

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so we can't recover
our memories.

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We began to try and make
a drug to block caspase-2

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and this year, we
developed a prototype

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that can repair the
synapses in cells

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that are growing in a dish.

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We're excited because we think

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that these drugs will
not only prevent,

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but also reverse
memory problems.

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Even more exciting, we think
that the memories that are lost

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are still there, but could
be recovered by this drug.

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So we started at home base,

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and it took 10 years for
us to get to a prototype

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which is a compound that
restores synaptic function

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in neurons growing in a dish.

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We hope that in four years,
we'll be at second base

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which means we'll have
a compound that gets

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into the brain and restores
memory function in mice.

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I would say, we would
be at third base

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when we have compounds
that are safe

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in small groups of humans,
but we will not get

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to home base again until the
drug is shown to be both safe

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and effective in two
large groups of patients.

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It's every scientist's dream

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to make the world
a better place,

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and we work very hard to
try and make discoveries

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that will help us make
the world a better place.

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(gentle music)
(birds chirp)

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(birds chirp)

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(gentle music)