Brain scans from over 4,000 people, across the age range (9 months to 94 years) and including 1,385 Alzheimer's patients, has revealed an early divergence between those who go on to develop Alzheimer’s and those who age normally. This divergence is seen in early atrophy of the hippocampus before age 40, and in the amygdala around age 40.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-03/c-ahd030819.php
A specially designed mobile phone game called Sea Hero Quest has found that gaming data can distinguish between those people who are genetically at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease ond those who are not. The game is designed to test spatial navigation skills — one of the first cognitive areas affected in Alzheimer's.
A standard memory and thinking test could not distinguish between the risk and non-risk groups.
Data from the Harvard Aging Brain Study found that higher amyloid beta levels were associated with increasing anxiety symptoms in cognitively normal older adults. The results suggest that worsening anxious-depressive symptoms may be an early predictor of elevated amyloid beta levels.
The study involved 270 cognitively healthy older adults (62-90). For five years, participants were annually assessed for depression, apathy-anhedonia, dysphoria, and anxiety.
A study has shown new technology can quickly and non-invasively detect reduced blood capillaries in the back of the eye that are an early indication of Alzheimer's. It also shows that these signs can help distinguish between Alzheimer's and MCI.
A very long-running study involving 290 people at risk of Alzheimer's has found that, in those 81 people who developed MCI or dementia, subtle changes in cognitive test scores were evident 11 to 15 years before the onset of clear cognitive impairment. They also showed increases in the rate of change of tau protein in cerebrospinal fluid an average of 34.4 years (for t-tau, or total Tau) and 13 years (for a modified version called p-tau) before the beginning of cognitive impairment.
A long-term study of nearly 3,000 older adults (57-85) has found that those who couldn’t identify at least four out of five common odors were more than twice as likely as those with a normal sense of smell to develop dementia within five years.
Of the participants, some 14% could name just three out of five, 5% could identify only two scents, 2% just one, and 1% couldn’t identify a single smell.
A small Japanese study has found evidence that those with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) show a specific decline in their ability to recognize faces, and this is accompanied by changes in the way they scan faces.
The study involved 18 patients with aMCI and 18 age-matched healthy controls. Participants were tested on their ability to perceive and remember images of faces and houses.
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a precursor of Alzheimer's disease, although having MCI does not mean you are definitely going to progress to Alzheimer's. A new study suggests that one sign of MCI development might be personality changes.
In the past few months, several studies have come out showing the value of three different tests of people's sense of smell for improving the accuracy of MCI and Alzheimer's diagnosis, or pointing to increased risk. The studies also add to growing evidence that a decline in sense of smell is an early marker for mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s. Indeed, it appears that this sensory loss is a very early symptom, preceding even the shrinking of the entorhinal cortex (the first brain region to show signs of atrophy).
A study comparing the language abilities of 22 healthy young individuals, 24 healthy older individuals and 22 people with MCI, has found that those with MCI: