Monitoring Alzheimer's disease via ultraweak photon emission

Niloofar Sefati; Tahereh Esmaeilpour; Vahid Salari; Asadollah Zarifkar; Farzaneh Dehghani; Mahdi Khorsand Ghaffari; Hadi Zadeh-Haghighi; Noémi Császár; István Bókkon; Serafim Rodrigues; Daniel Oblak

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.108744

Monitoring Alzheimer's disease via ultraweak photon emission

iScience. 2023 Dec 14;27(1):108744. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.108744. eCollection 2024 Jan 19.

Authors

Niloofar Sefati¹, Tahereh Esmaeilpour¹, Vahid Salari^{2

3

4}, Asadollah Zarifkar⁵, Farzaneh Dehghani^{1

6}, Mahdi Khorsand Ghaffari⁵, Hadi Zadeh-Haghighi^{2

3

4

7}, Noémi Császár⁸, István Bókkon^{8

9}, Serafim Rodrigues^{10

11}, Daniel Oblak^{2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anatomical Sciences, School of Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
³ Institute for Quantum Science and Technology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada.
⁴ Quantum Alberta, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada.
⁵ Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
⁶ Histomorphometry and Stereology Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
⁷ Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, Calgary AB T2N 1N4, Canada.
⁸ Psychosomatic Outpatient Clinics, Budapest, Hungary.
⁹ Vision Research Institute, Neuroscience and Consciousness Research Department, Lowell, MA, USA.
¹⁰ MCEN Team, Basque Center for Applied Mathematics, Bilbao, Bizkaia, Spain.
¹¹ IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Plaza Euskadi 5, 48009 Bilbao, Spain.

Abstract

In an innovative experiment, we detected ultraweak photon emission (UPE) from the hippocampus of male rat brains and found significant correlations between Alzheimer's disease (AD), memory decline, oxidative stress, and UPE intensity. These findings may open up novel methods for screening, detecting, diagnosing, and classifying neurodegenerative diseases, particularly AD. The study suggests that UPE from the brain's neural tissue can serve as a valuable indicator. It also proposes the development of a minimally invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) photonic chip for monitoring and diagnosing AD, offering high spatiotemporal resolution of brain activity. The study used a rodent model of sporadic AD, demonstrating that STZ-induced sAD resulted in increased hippocampal UPE, which was associated with oxidative stress. Treatment with donepezil reduced UPE and improved oxidative stress. These findings support the potential utility of UPE as a screening and diagnostic tool for AD and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Keywords: Neuroscience; Physics; Techniques in neuroscience.