Using flashing lights as an Alzheimer's disease treatment may be one step closer to reality, thanks to new research with mice.

Radiation for brain cancer can kickstart an immune system response that severs connections between nerve cells, research in mice shows.

"...the signals in our brain that modulate the sleep and awake state also act as a switch that turns the immune system off and on."

When researchers removed immune cells called microglia from mice with Alzheimer's, the disease's telltale plaques never formed.