A three-year study involving 169 people with mild cognitive impairment has found that those who later developed Alzheimer's disease showed 10-30% greater atrophy in two specific locations within the hippocampus, the cornu ammonis (CA1) and the subiculum.
A study involving 511 older adults (average age 78) has found that 11.6% of those with very mild or mild Alzheimer’s (43% of the participants) had mental lapses, compared to only 2 of the 295 without Alzheimer’s. Those with mental lapses also tended to have more severe Alzheimer’s. Although mental lapses are characteristic of dementia with Lewy bodies, this is the first study to look at them in connection with Alzheimer’s. Having mental lapses was defined as having three or four of the following symptoms:
Loss of memory and problems with judgment in dementia patients can cause difficulties in relation to eating and nutrition; these problems in turn can lead to poor quality of life, pressure ulcers and infections. A study used two different step-by-step training programs to help dementia patients regain eating skills. Three institutions, involving 85 patients, were assigned to one of three programs: spaced retrieval training; Montessori-based training; control. Training consisted of three 30-40 min sessions per week, for 8 weeks.
A European trial involving 225 patients with mild Alzheimer's has found that those who drank Souvenaid (a cocktail of uridine, choline and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA, plus B vitamins, phosopholipids and antioxidants) for 12 weeks were more likely to improve their performance in a delayed verbal recall task. 40% of the Souvenaid group showed improved performance compared to 24% of the placebo group. Those with the mildest cases of Alzheimer’s showed the most improvement. There was no improvement on the more general ADAS-cog test. Three further clinical trials, one in the U.S.
Subjective cognitive impairment (SCI), marked by situations such as when a person recognizes they can't remember a name like they used to or where they recently placed important objects the way they used to, is experienced by between one-quarter and one-half of the population over the age of 65. A seven-year study involving 213 adults (mean age 67) has found that healthy older adults reporting SCI are dramatically more likely to progress to MCI or dementia than those free of SCI (54% vs 15%). Moreover, those who had SCI declined significantly faster.
A German study involving nearly 4000 older adults (55+) has found that physical activity significantly reduced the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment over a two-year period. Nearly 14% of those with no physical activity at the start of the study developed cognitive impairment, compared to 6.7% of those with moderate activity, and 5.1% of those with high activity. Moderate activity was defined as less than 3 times a week.
Rodent studies have demonstrated the existence of specialized neurons involved in spatial memory. These ‘grid cells’ represent where an animal is located within its environment, firing in patterns that show up as geometrically regular, triangular grids when plotted on a map of a navigated surface. Now for the first time, evidence for these cells has been found in humans. Moreover, those with the clearest signs of grid cells performed best in a virtual reality spatial memory task, suggesting that the grid cells help us to remember the locations of objects.
Although HIV doesn't directly infect neurons, it appears that once it has crossed the blood-brain barrier, it affects supporting cells that can release immune factors that harm neurons. New techniques used on 26 subjects with HIV and 25 matched controls have now found that those with HIV showed decreased brain blood flow to levels roughly equivalent to readings seen for uninfected individuals 15 to 20 years older. It is suggested that HIV, medications, or both, are accelerating what is a normal age-related process. It’s estimated that 14-18% of AIDS patients in the U.S.
A study (“Midlife in the United States”) assessing 3,343 men and women aged 32-84 (mean age 56), of whom almost 40% had at least a 4-year college degree, has found evidence that frequent cognitive activity can counteract the detrimental effect of poor education on age-related cognitive decline.
Previous research has shown that older adults are more likely to incorrectly repeat an action in situations where a prospective memory task has become habitual — for example, taking more medication because they’ve forgotten they’ve already taken it. A new study has found that doing something unusual at the same time helps seniors remember having done the task. In the study, older adults told to put a hand on their heads whenever they made a particular response, reduced the level of repetition errors to that of younger adults.