For Bayer Corporation, Black Hammer Productions, Inc. created the Alzheimer's Abyss video wall to explain the "cholinergic hypothesis" that attributes cognitive loss in Alzheimer's disease to the deterioration of cholinergic pathways in the brain. As part of a pre-launch marketing effort for a new drug, Bayer Corporation displayed the video wall during medical tradeshows to educate physicians about the theoretical foundation for its drug research, which seeks a treatment for the cognitive loss associated with Alzheimer's disease.
The Alzheimer's Abyss incorporates PET scans, MRIs, 3-D models and CGI animation to illustrate how cholinergic degeneration leads to loss of memory, disorientation, and emotional swings as Alzheimer's disease progresses. An animated 3-D human model was created to portray the elderly patient who appears in the opening and closing sequences. A 3-D brain model demonstrates the importance of cholinergic pathways in the formation of memories and the expression of emotions; the cholinergic pathways and activity along them are represented graphically by impulses flowing through the simulated brain. The Alzheimer's Abyss contributed to greater awareness of the symptoms of dementia, which are often ignored by physicians as merely the consequences of old age.
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