Surprisingly, many patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease also had disease in the small blood vessels of the brain. “We suspect that in New Mexico maybe a half of our Alzheimer’s people also have vascular disease,” she said. Meanwhile, a fresh area of concern is the unknown health consequences of nano– and microplastics in the brain, Bearer said. “Nanoplastics in the brain represent a new player on the field of brain pathology,” she said. Rosenberg, a longtime chair of the UNM Department of Neurology and also director of the UNM Center for Memory & Aging, has published extensively on the association of vascular disease with dementia symptoms.