Science of Stall Catchers: the High Fat Diet dataset
Right now in Stall Catchers, our catchers are analyzing a dataset concerned with the role of a high fat diet in the formation of stalls.
What does that mean? What research questions are we trying to answer? How are catchers helping us answer them?
All explained in this video by our team member Lisa:
And here's the written script:
Stalls are caused by cells getting stuck in small blood vessels of the brain.
These stalls can mark the starting point of Alzheimer's disease, making symptoms worse over time.
We also know that a range of cardiovascular conditions, like high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol, and diabetes, place people at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
We want to know if these cardiovascular conditions have anything to do with stall formation, and if so, exactly how does that work?
To answer this question, we need to count stalls in the brains of healthy mice and Alzheimer’s mice, with and without cardiovascular conditions.