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#CrowdCloudLIVE After each episode's WORLD premiere in April, show host, producer, and people seen on the show participated in post-premiere roundtable discussions. Viewers like you listened in, asked questions, and were able to dive deeper into the power of Citizen Science.

Watch the recorded Facebook Live events now. Discover more about how Citizen Science is revolutionizing the ways we gather, analyze, and utilize the data that fuels scientific research, discovery, and community action.

Find your local station and showtimes here, or go to:
Aptonline.org

Alzheimer's

In Episode 1, The Crowd & The Cloud explores the research-accelerating power of online games. Scroll down to learn more about the people and projects featured in this segment.

Eyesonalz
FEATURED PROJECT
GOAL:

Play the Stall Catchers online game to help identify blocked blood vessels in living mouse brains, advancing Alzheimer’s research.

EyesOnAlz is an online citizen science project that enables you to take part in research on Alzheimer’s disease by playing puzzle games, the first of which is called Stall Catchers. It’s a project from the Human Computation Institute in collaboration with the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab at Cornell University. In playing the game you not only speed up research for treatment and drug discovery, but you learn more about the disease and how it can impact your life, or your loved ones.

Alzheimer’s disease (and other forms of dementia) is associated with reduced blood flow in the brain, so researchers are observing the mechanisms that cause this. One mechanism they’ve identified is that capillaries can become blocked by white blood cells sticking to the walls of blood vessels causing “stalls”, so blood no longer flows. In Alzheimer’s, 2% of blood vessels can become stalled which causes blood flow to be reduced by 30%, which worsens the conditions of the disease. By reversing stalls in mice, researchers at the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab have discovered that symptoms of Alzheimer’s can be reduced, but developing a treatment for humans requires a lot more time and energy. It takes them one hour to collect data and one week for them to analyze it, and even sophisticated machine recognition can’t do it, so that’s where citizen science steps in.

When you play the online game Stall Catchers, you speed up research drastically. In the game, you look at live microscope movies of mouse brains and try to find stalled vessels. When you catch stalls you build up your score to level up and compete on the game leaderboard to receive badges for various achievements. It’s similar to other citizen science games like Stardust@Home and EyeWire, which are partners in developing EyesOnALZ, which have been very successful in scientific discoveries.

www.eyesonalz.com

Additional Resources

Alzheimer’s Association

Formed in 1980, the Alzheimer's Association advances research to end Alzheimer's and dementia while enhancing care for those living with the disease.

http://www.alz.org/

Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation

The Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) is supporting scientists around the globe who are investigating novel drugs to prevent, treat and cure Alzheimer’s disease.

http://alzdiscovery.org

Meryl Comer’s “Slow Dancing with a Stranger”

Emmy award-winning journalist and leading Alzheimer’s advocate, Meryl Comer gives a profoundly intimate and unflinching account of her husband’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

http://merylcomer.com/

LEAD Coalition (Leaders Engaged on Alzheimer’s Disease)

A diverse and growing national coalition of more than 90 member organizations committed to overcoming Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

http://www.leadcoalition.org/

Bright Focus Foundation (BFF)

BrightFocus is one of America's leading supporters of basic scientific investigations to better understand and find cures for Alzheimer's disease, age-related macular degeneration, and glaucoma.

http://www.brightfocus.org/research

BrightFocus: Bringing the Power of the Crowd to Solve Alzheimer’s

BFF has a special focus on Alzheimer’s, and is supporting the EyesOnALZ crowdsourcing project featured in CROWD & CLOUD.

http://www.brightfocus.org/alzheimers/news/bringing-power-crowd-solve-al...