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September 12, 2012

"Inside the Brain: Unraveling the Mystery of Alzheimer's Disease"

"Inside the Brain: Unraveling the Mystery of Alzheimer's Disease," by Stacy Jannis and her team at Jannis Productions, Silver Spring, Md.

In a brain riddled with Alzheimer's disease, protein tangles grow and connections between nerve cells shrivel. This video animates this microscopic damage to explain how the disease starts. The team from Jannis Productions produced the movie for the National Institute on Aging to depict scientists' most current understanding of what happens inside cells during the disease.

This is one of two images that won Honorable Mention in the Non-Interactive Media (Screen Shots) category of the 2009 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge (SciVis) competition, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science. You can view the other winning entry Here. The competition is held each year to celebrate the grand tradition of science visualization and to encourage its continued growth. The spirit of the competition is to communicate science, engineering and technology for education and journalistic purposes.

You can view other entries to the competition from this movie by Jannis Productions, beginning Here. To learn more about the competition and view all the winning entries, see the NSF SciVis Special Report. (Date of Image: September 2008)

Credit: Stacy Jannis, William Dempsey and Rebekah Fredenburg; Jannis Productions


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