On 14 March, researchers from the United States of America published an article on a trial assessing the effect of auditory stimulation in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) mouse models in the journal Cell. The specific process the researchers used is entitled “auditory gamma entrainment using sensory stimuli” (GENUS) and the researcher’s motivation to further explore possible beneficial effects on mice came from their previous research that showed that this non-invasive light flicker method positively affected pathology in a part of the brain of mice that is strongly associated with visual functions.
The team induced the special tone stimulation throughout seven days especially targeting the animal’s gamma frequency (brain waves that are part of the communication between neurons) in the auditory cortex and a sub field of the hippocampus, the CA1, which is associated with memory functions. The results showed, that the mice did not only showed positive activation in brain cells such as microglia, astrocytes and even vasculature but that in addition to that, that phosphorylation of tau (which is also connected to the death of brain cells in AD) was reduced.
The scientists furthermore reported that a combination of auditory and visual GENUS led to decreased amyloid (which is also associated with the death of brain cells) in the frontal part of the brain (prefrontal cortex) and neocortex. In addition to this, the researchers noted that the mice showed an improvement in cognitive function and spatial recognition tasks. Since this is a study with mouse models, the authors clearly stated that these results cannot be translated to humans but warrant future research to determine possible translatable effects.