Director Renny Harlin created the film Deep Blue Sea in 1999 that involves Dr. Susan McCallister genetically modifying three Mako sharks to have a larger brain mass. The film takes place at Aquatica, which is an underwater laboratory that is located on the Pacific Ocean. Dr. McCallister hopes to harvest the brain cells and tissue from the Mako sharks to potentially reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s in patients by restarting dead neurons and cells in the brain. However, her experiment goes wrong as Dr. McCallister and her team are fighting for their lives as the three sharks wreak havoc on the research facility. When I first watched this movie, I disregarded all scientific information and focused solely on the action due to not having any…show more content… Alzheimer’s disease corresponds with neuroscience, behavior, and memory and is defined as “a degenerative disease marked by progressive cognitive decline, with symptoms including confusion, memory loss, mood swings, and eventual loss of physical and bodily function” (Feist & Rosenberg, 199). Deep Blue Sea (1999) mentions that “200,000 men and women develop Alzheimer’s each year.” Alzheimer’s is the result of the formation of plaques that kill off brain cells and leads to neurons firing less and less until it is nonexistent, which leads to less cognitive function within the brain. The three types of memory are sensory, short-term, and long-term. In the early stages of Alzheimer’s, individuals first lose their short-term memory, which “temporarily stores a limited amount of information before it is either transferred to long-term storage or forgotten” (Feist & Rosenberg, 252), that results in them repeating conversations or forgetting where they placed items. As the disease progresses, people begin to lose the ability to encode long-term memory, which is defined as “the capacity to store a vast amount of information for as little as 30 seconds and as long as a lifetime” (Feist and Rosenberg, 252), when they begin to forget past memories or loved ones’ names. In addition, those with the disease have changes in their behavior that include the following: depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and mood swings aside from others (Mayo Clinic). As a result, those with Alzheimer’s eventually live every day as if it is, literally, a new
