In a two-part series, CAF Research Consortium member Dr. Rudy Tanzi and Dr. Deepak Chopra address today’s most critical questions about Alzheimer’s by explaining what it is and where as a nation we are in our search for a cure.

The article posted today gives an overview of the main symptoms and biological processes associated with Alzheimer’s in a readable, easy-to-understand fashion. Here’s an except from the article:

“It is now recognized that Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, afflicting about 70 percent to 80 percent of elderly individuals who are afflicted. (Researchers now believe that Alzheimer’s begins a long time, possibly even decades, before the first symptoms of memory loss are seen.) In Alzheimer’s nerve cells and their connections, call synapses, deteriorate mostly in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus. The cerebral cortex is an extremely convoluted structure that’s associated with higher mental functions: thought, reasoning, sensation and motion. The hippocampus plays a crucial role in learning and in processing various forms of information, such as long-term memory and spatial memory. Both the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus lose mass and shrink as the disease advances.”

To read the full Huffington Post article, click here.