Disease-Causing Proteins

Understanding the cause of “mad cow” disease and related conditions resulted in a fundamental shift in what scientists understood about proteins in brain disease.

Alzheimer's Disease: Just for Kids and Teens

Help teens learn about how they can provide care and support to people with Alzheimer's disease.

The Forgetting: Lesson Plans for Educators

Almost everyone knows someone affected by Alzheimer's disease. The Forgetting is a documentary that includes lesson plans to help teach about the disease.

Neurological Disorders

Learn about the effects of migraines, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease. Use these fact sheets and activities to educate your students.

Is every dementia the same as Alzheimer's disease?

Dementia is a description of any progressive disorder that takes away a person’s cognitive and functional abilities.

Anatol Kreitzer: Unraveling the Secrets of Parkinson’s

A neuroscientist digs below the surface to look for a new answer to a terrible problem. 

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

This progressive disorder strikes approximately 5,600 Americans annually, with an average survival time of just two to five years from symptom onset.

Huntington’s Disease

Affecting some 30,000 Americans and placing 200,000 more Americans at risk for inheriting the disease from an affected parent, Huntington’s disease is now considered one of the most common hereditary brain disorders.

Parkinson’s Disease Treatment Breakthroughs—and the Need for More Research

The discovery in the late 1950s that the level of dopamine was decreased in the brains of Parkinson’s patients was followed in the 1960s by successful treatment with the drug levodopa, which is converted to dopamine in the brain. This historical event is one of the greatest medical breakthroughs in the field of neurology. 

Alzheimer's Disease

One of the most frightening and devastating of all neurological disorders is the dementia that can occur in the elderly. The most common form of this illness is Alzheimer’s disease.

Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that affects approximately 1.5 million individuals in the United States. Typically, people start showing symptoms over the age of 50. In fact, aging is the only known risk factor for the development of this disorder.

Alzheimer's Disease: Latest Research and Treatments

Currently approved treatments for Alzheimer’s disease do not modify the course of the disease and offer only temporary mitigation of some symptoms, such as agitation, anxiety, unpredictable behavior, sleep disturbances, and depression.

National Institutes of Health: Office of Science Education

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Curriculum Supplement Series provides interactive teaching units that combine cutting-edge science research discoveries from the NIH with state-of-the-art instructional materials. Each supplement is a teacher's guide to two weeks of lessons on science and human health.

Brain Tour: Alzheimer's Disease and the Brain

What happens in the brain of a person with Alzheimer's disease? This tour by the Alzheimer's Association explains how the brain works and how Alzheimer's affects it.

Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Today

Although Alzheimer’s disease rarely strikes before age 65, many people have a dreaded fear of the disease. They have good reason.

Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Tomorrow

Although scientists have made great strides in understanding Alzheimer’s disease, no treatment has been approved for halting or reversing the condition. Meanwhile, the need is becoming more urgent, as populations in the world’s developed nations grow older and live longer.

New Diagnostic Criteria for Alzheimer’s Disease: What do they really mean?

With new diagnostic criteria for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease, Dr. David M. Holtzman explains what this might mean to future patients.

Parkinson's Disease: Making a Difference Tomorrow

Though it has long defied treatments, new discoveries provide a bright future for those who suffer from Parkinson's. 

Parkinson's Disease: Making a Difference Today

In Parkinson’s disease, cells in the substantia nigra, a region that produces dopamine, gradually die off, disrupting the brain’s movement systems and leading to the characteristic tremor.

It Takes a Village: Large-Scale Studies Prove Vital to Alzheimers Disease Research

Richard Hodes, M.D. National Institute on aging and the variations that make researching Alzheimer's so difficult.