Together, these symptoms come together under the umbrella term “cognitive fluctuations,” which is a spontaneous alteration in cognition, attention and arousal, as defined by the study. In layman’s terms, these syndromes are known as mental lapses or “brain farts.”

While prior studies have associated cognitive fluctuations with Lewy Body Disease, a type of dementia closely allied to both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, the impact of this phenomenon on healthy brain aging and Alzheimer disease was unknown.

To probe into the relationship between cognitive fluctuations and Alzheimer’s, James Galvin, associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, director of the Memory Diagnostic Center and member of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, pioneered a study along with his colleagues Adriana Escandon and Noor Al-Hammadi.

In the study, 511 research participants of age 78.1, plus or minus 8 years, were evaluated for the presence and severity of dementia using the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) and a neuropsychological test at the Washington University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

Furthermore, the research participants also filled out informant assessments of fluctuations with the Mayo Fluctuations Questionnaire and day level of alertness with the Mayo Sleep Questionnaire.

Through this combination of assessments, researchers found that while only 0.7 percent of non-demented older adults had cognitive fluctuations, up to 15 percent of Alzheimer’s patients displayed such phenomenon.

After controlling for age and alertness level, researchers also found that participants with cognitive fluctuations were 4.6 times more likely to have dementia.

Although Galvin acknowledges that the presence of these fluctuations may be a normal sign of aging, he suggests that mental lapses are positively correlated with dementia.

“If you have these lapses, they don’t by themselves mean that you have Alzheimer’s disease [because] such lapses do occur in healthy older adults,” Galvin said. “But our results suggest that they are something your doctor needs to consider if he or she is evaluating you for problems with thinking and memory.”

The result of this study is significant because mental lapses have been commonly attributed to incipient Alzheimer’s disease.

“We have demonstrated for the first time that such episodes are more likely to occur in persons who are developing Alzheimer’s disease,” Galvin said.

While the study revealed some mysteries about Alzheimer’s, it also raised some questions.

“It is not yet known if the small number of non-demented older adults who experience fluctuations will go on to develop cognitive impairment,” Galvin said. “We hope to address this with longitudinal follow-up.”

In addition to following up on adults with elevated levels of cognitive fluctuations, Galvin hopes to study further these mental lapses from different angles, such as imaging strategies, to better identify treatment strategies.

Another route of research is to examine the alteration in brain function in individuals with fluctuations. To do so, Galvin plans to observe the changes in resting blood oxygen levels using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

While many studies are necessary to reach a more definitive conclusion, Galvin is optimistic about the current findings.

“Given the strong influence fluctuations have on cognitive performance, it is possible that fluctuations could serve as an infrequent, but important clinical marker for dementia,” Galvin wrote.

Science researchers at the University say they are enjoying a spike in federal funding, thanks in large part to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. So far, the University has received around $80 million in stimulus-related research funding, most of it for science. The money comes as a result of some 200 grants the University has received in the last year, culled from more than 900 grants for which University researchers applied.

Federal research dollars have mostly funded projects at the medical school. In June, for example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) extended a five-year, $37 million grant to medical researchers studying biodefense and emerging infectious diseases in the Midwest. The NIH also gave the medical school $19 million to study microbes in the human body and the role they play in health and disease.

George Weinstock, professor of genetics at the medical school, is heading the medical school’s microbe study. Weinstock is also directing a $2 million stimulus-funded study on a bacterial infection called MRSA.

“We are doing very well and are in an expansion mode as we received funding for about 10 projects last year,” Weinstock said. “We’re going a little nuts keeping up with all the work, but it’s a heady feeling to have the opportunity to do so much cool science and contribute to the biomedical realm.”

Weinstock said science research is only just getting a jump-start in funding now that President Bush has left office.

“The Bush administration did a tremendous amount of damage to funding for scientific research,” Weinstock said. “Prior to the administration, there had been a lot more funding for the NIH. We’ll just have to see in the new administration whether they’re going to be able to get the momentum back in the scientific research.”

He said stimulus funding has proven helpful to scientific research, but it does not guarantee strong science research funding from Obama in the future.

“We’re still navigating choppy waters, and time will tell how it all comes out,” Weinstock said.

$20 million biology grant is largest ever to Danforth Campus

Not all of the University’s federal research funding has gone to the medical school. Last spring, the University received its largest-ever award to the Danforth Campus, a $20 million grant to study light energy. The award was not a part of the government’s stimulus funding but came through the Department of Energy.

The $20 million is going toward the establishment of a Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC) on campus, in which scientists will study the harnessing of energy from light. Robert Blankenship, a professor in the biology and chemistry departments, is heading the project. He said the study will focus on identifying the principles that govern natural photosynthetic antenna systems, such as the ones bacteria use to create energy, as a basis for designing solar-powered energy systems.

“We start with the purely natural antennas, that we’ve found in organisms. Then we go to the bio-hybrids, half natural, half synthetic. Then finally, we move on to the purely synthetic systems, things you might design for an artificial complex,” Blankenship said. “But they’re all designed to address the same issue of light collection.”

Blankenship said he learned that the project had received funding when President Obama announced the grant at the National Academy of Sciences last April.

“It was sort of like, your life has just changed,” Blankenship said of hearing that his project had just been given $20 million.

He said research projects like his are getting funded in higher numbers with money from the stimulus. But he reiterated Weinstock’s message that this does not mean science research has a stable future.

“Science has struggled for years to keep the enterprise going, so I think the Recovery Act funding was welcome in that sense,” Blankenship said. “The thing is the Recovery Act money is kind of a one-time shot.”