But applying these new findings to practical interventions to help patients already suffering cognitive impairment is tricky. "There are positive steps being taken in the field, but they are going to take years to come to fruition," says David Knopman, a neurologist and Alzheimer's disease specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Discovering ways to prevent or cure the disease will require much more research. Here are some of the studies that researchers hope will yield significant results:

Earlier this month, a study by Maiken Nedergaard, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Rochester in New York, and coauthors suggested that sleep can help the brain flush out and clear away damaging molecules, including beta-amyloid, whose sticky