Posted by Alzheimer’s disease is the 6th leading cause of death in the United States. It is a neurological disorder that affects the brain’s central nervous system by attacking and destroying nerve cells. I hope through understanding Alzheimer’s disease we can gain a better understanding of the importance of our own nervous system.
Christopher completed his STEAM project on the effects of Alzheimer’s disease on a nerve cell. Reading Christophers’ essay and watching his presentation, it is clear that he is passionate and very well educated on this detrimental disease. I learned a plethora of information that I never knew about Alzheimer’s disease. This disease is the 6th leading causer of death in adults, and that outpaces breast cancer and prostate cancer combined-such sad statistics, unfortunately. According to the essay, one of the many possible causes of Alzheimer’s disease is the role of proteins in the body that are essential to our brains and bodies. Still, the protein can also be the downfall if something goes wrong in the human body. The Beta-amyloid and the Tau are the two leading examples of the dark side proteins. These two proteins cause the nerve cell to lose function and eventually die off.
Christopher did his presentation and art portion of the STEAM project by creating a larger than scale healthy adult nerve cell. It was an excellent presentation, and the creativity was exceptional and very well thought out and thorough. Christopher did an outstanding job at mimicking and recreating what occurs to the healthy nerve cell, and how the proteins attack and eventually causing the nerve cell to become inoperational. I really enjoyed the visual representations of the tangles, which are the vast quantities of the twisted tau protein attaching to the microtubules. Another tremendous visual representation was the plaque forming on the dendrites to stop firing the nerve cell and sending that information to the brain. I enjoyed how Christopher would show the decline of the nerve cell by interacting and adding different proteins, which showed the adverse effects of Alzheimer’s on the neurological level. It was an impressive presentation and was explained very well.