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Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered that an existing therapy used to treat Alzheimer’s disease might also work on patients with Primary Progressive Aphasia, a type of dementia that destroys language and currently has no treatment.

The 8th Annual Les Turner Symposium brought together investigators, clinicians, patients and families to share the latest discoveries in ALS research, promote scientific collaboration and provide patient education.

Despite decades of research and lack of a treatment to cure or slow the progression of the disease, researchers, caregivers and advocates are optimistic about the future. “I see a treatment, it’s going to happen. Scientists are very close,” said William Klein, a professor at Northwestern University. “I believe we’re on a positive path,” said Harry John, CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association. “We’ve got a lot to do but we’re on a positive path.”

Intrigued by the potantial benefits, Dr. Borna Bonakdarpour, a neurologist with Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, put together a music therapy study this spring at Silverado Orchard Park Memory Care Community in Morton Grove. Each week for 12 weeks, the Evanston-based nonprofit Institute for Therapy Through the Arts held concerts for 10 Silverado residents. The musicians are specially trained to apply their skills to therapy, often by interacting with patients during performances, and getting them to beat on drums, sing, and dance. The $84,000 program is funded by an anonymous donor.

It’s pretty extraordinary for people in their 80s and 90s to keep the same sharp memory as someone several decades younger, so scientists are peeking into the brains of“superagers” who do to uncover their secret. The work is the flip side of the disappointing hunt for new drugs to fight or prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Instead of tackling that problem, “why don’t we figure out what it is we might need to do to maximize our memory?” said neuro­scientist Emily Rogalski, who leads the SuperAging study at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Dr. Darby Morhardt, professor at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

For nine years, these experts have been examining “SuperAgers” — men and women over age 80 whose memories are as good — or better — than people 20 to 30 years younger. Every couple of years, the group fills out surveys about their lives and gets a battery of neuropsychological tests, brain scans and a neurological examination, among other evaluations. “When we started this project, we weren’t really sure we could find these individuals,” said Emily Rogalski, an associate professor at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

Margaret and Mark Zumdahl have made countless memories during their 25-year marriage, but Margaret, who lives with Alzheimer’s, is slowly starting to lose those memories. Thanks to a special program at Northwestern's Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center, the couple is receiving help to deal with the disease.

A new study shows that a neurodegenerative syndrome in older adults, frontotemporal dementia, shares several fundamental features with another neurodegenerative disease usually seen in children.

“If I had your stem cells and created a heart, liver, lung and an ovary, I could test 10 different drugs at 10 different doses on you and say, ‘Here’s the drug that will help your Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or diabetes,’ ” the lead investigator, Teresa K. Woodruff, said in a report about the research on the Northwestern University website. “It’s the ultimate personalized medicine, a model of your body for testing drugs.”

“Truly, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine is an institution on the rise,” said Eric G. Neilson, MD, vice president for Medical Affairs and Lewis Landsberg Dean. See some of the medical school's notable moments from 2016.

“It appears that some elderly individuals are immune to the effects of Alzheimer’s pathology,” said neurologist Changiz Geula, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who presented the findings Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego.

Can you keep the love light shining after your partner’s brain has begun to dim? Just ask Denise Tompkins of Naperville, Ill., married 36 years to John, now 69, who has Alzheimer’s disease. The Tompkinses participated in an unusual eight-week storytelling workshop at Northwestern University that is helping to keep the spark of love alive in couples coping with the challenges of encroaching dementia. Every week participants are given a specific assignment to write a brief story about events in their lives that they then share with others in the group. The program culminates with a moving, often funny, 20-minute written story read alternately by the partners in each couple in front of an audience. The storytelling workshop, which started in January of 2014, was the brainchild of Lauren Dowden, then an intern in social work at Northwestern’s Cognitive, Neurological and Alzheimer’s Disease Center.

Studies that have looked at so-called Super Agers — people who stay cognitively sharp well into old age — have found these people have only one factor in common, says Sandra Weintraub, a professor of neurology, psychiatry and psychology and a neuropsychologist at Northwestern University's Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center. "Some of them smoke, some of them drink, some of them are couch potatoes, some exercise every day, some eat pork bellies and some consume a Mediterranean diet," Weintraub says. "What they do have in common is that they are very engaged and active. They're so busy it's hard to get them in for research visits."

Studying patients with a rare form of dementia called primary progressive aphasia has given scientists a new understanding of the way the brain comprehends language.