You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. Alzheimer's disease affects millions of us, and there still isn't a cure. But neuroscientist Lisa Genova found there are ways we can prevent Alzheimer's. In her archive talk from 2017, she shares how. And after the talk, stick around.

I sat down with Lisa recently to find out how the research has advanced since she first

presented these ideas a few years ago.

And I'm super excited to share that conversation with y'all.

How many people here would like to live to be at least 80 years old?

Yeah. I think we all have this hopeful expectation of living into old age.

Let's project out into the future, to your future use, and let's imagine that we're all 85.

Now, everyone look at two people.

One of you probably has Alzheimer's disease.

All right, all right.

And maybe you're thinking, well, it won't be me.

Then, okay, you are a caregiver.

So in some way, this terrifying disease is likely to affect us all.

Part of the fear around Alzheimer's stems from the sense that there's nothing we can do about it.

Despite decades of research, we still have no disease-modifying treatment and no cure.

So if we're lucky enough to live long enough, Alzheimer's appears to be our brain's destiny.

But maybe it doesn't have to be. What if I told you we could change these statistics,

literally change our brain's destiny,

without relying on a cure or advancements in medicine?

Let's begin by looking at what we currently understand

about the neuroscience of Alzheimer's.

Here's a picture of two neurons connecting.

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