Chinese researchers have found that a simple, non-invasive sound treatment can produce significant and sustained biological changes in elderly monkeys, opening the door to a potential natural treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
According to the Chinese news agency “Xinhua”, this discovery came in the results of a study supervised by researchers from the Kunming Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and was published in the latest issue of the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
The study revolves around the use of an auditory tone with a frequency of 40 Hz, which is a low tone within the range that humans can hear.
While previous studies on mice have shown that stimulation at 40 Hz may contribute to removing toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease from the brain, this new study provides the first definitive evidence through a study conducted on non-human primates.
The research team conducted its study on 9 elderly rhesus monkeys, which naturally develop plaques in their brains similar to those associated with Alzheimer’s disease, making them closely related models for studying this condition in humans.
The monkeys listened to a 40 Hz tone for one hour daily for a week, and the results were remarkable, as the levels of key proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the monkeys’ cerebrospinal fluid more than doubled immediately after the end of the treatment period, indicating an enhanced waste removal process.
