Mind Science

Brain Tissue Viscolasticity & EEG Oscillations: Towards Novel Drugs for ALZHEIMER’S Disease

Authors: Arturo Tozzi
Comments: 9 Pages.

Here we provide an effort to physically correlate two underrated features of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), i.e., changes in brain tissue’s viscoelasticity and increased power in the low-frequency EEG bands. Indeed, the brain displays less stiffness in AD than in normal individuals, making the brain of diseased subjects more “liquid”. Because electric waves propagate more slowly in less solid mediums, we hypothesize that the EEG waves’ reduction detected in AD could be correlated with the pathological viscoelastic alterations of the impaired brain tissues. We provide the mathematical apparatus to test our hypothesis, showing that the theoretically predicted electric oscillations’ decrease in less viscoelastic mediums matches the reduced stiffness detected in real brain tissues from AD patients. We conclude with a testable hypothesis: the use of drugs able to modify and restore the proper brain viscoelastic features might provide a useful therapeutic tool able to quicken EEG electric waves’ frequencies, thus contributing to improve AD symptoms.
Category: Mind Science