More Sensitive Tests for Alzheimer’s
February 6th, 2006 by RespiteMatch.com(Ivanhoe Newswire) — More sensitive tests may help better predict Alzheimer’s disease. Two new studies examine the effectiveness of the screenings.
In the first study, from the University of Amsterdam, researchers visited older people in their homes and gave them memory tests on laptop computers. Two years later, they compared the scores of those who developed Alzheimer’s to those who didn’t.
The tests included a screening that had participants recall five semantically related and five semantically unrelated pairs of words, a test that measured how fast participants read aloud words presented on a computer screen, and a visual association test.
Researchers found those for whom “priming” information didn’t aid memory or whose learning wasn’t aided by semantic knowledge were significantly more likely to develop Alzheimer’s.
The second study was conducted at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis. Based on results, researchers say a dichotic listening task can pick up early warning signs of Alzheimer’s. The task reveals how well people process information when they hear one thing in the left ear and another in the right ear.
Task measurements revealed people with mild Alzheimer’s disease had a harder time switching their attention and reporting what they heard in the left ear, which sent information to the right half of the brain. The right-ear advantage increased with the severity of the dementia. People farther along in the disease found it even harder to override the usual path to process what went through the left ear to the right brain.
Researchers say this confirms Alzheimer’s patients have problems with selective attention in the early stages. It may explain why patients start to struggle with everyday tasks, like driving, that call for processing a lot of information.
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SOURCE: Neuropsychology, 2005;19:629-40,687-95
