Lasers Could One Day Detect -- And Destroy -- Brain Disease

A new technology that uses only light could one day detect and annihilate disease-causing proteins in the brain, researchers say.

The method involves using lasers to distinguish between normal brain tissue and the abnormal tissue found in people with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (which is referred to as the human form of mad cow disease, although in most cases the two conditions are not related). The laser technique -- which has not yet been tested in animals -- might one day be able to treat people with these diseases, researchers report.