Many people practice various brain-training exercises to keep the mind limber as they age.
Advertisement
A report published in Business Insider revealed, “Researchers on Sunday outlined a syndrome called “mild behavioral impairment” that may be a harbinger of Alzheimer’s or other dementias, and proposed a checklist of symptoms to alert doctors and families”. The study, conducted by the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centre and Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute, focused on people who were cognitively healthy but at risk for Alzheimer’s.
Losing interest in favourite activities?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, and the change in the personality or behavior stayed for months, it may point towards a very initial stage of dementia, as per a group of neuropsychiatrists and Alzheimer’s experts.
Alzheimer’s disease is largely a brain disorder, but it spans out beyond a simple memory decline.
Nina Silverberg, the director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Centers program at the National Institute on Aging, who wasn’t a part of making checklist or the proposed latest diagnosis, said that something like this is much needed.
Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, affects more than 5 million people in the US, a number growing as the population ages.
Based on their findings, study co-author Dr. Zahinoor Ismail, of the Cumming School of Medicine at Calgary, and colleagues have developed a 38-point checklist that they say could help doctors identify such behavioral changes in patients and measure their progression over time.
A study presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) in Toronto, Canada, found a specific type of computerized brain training game can reduce the risk of dementia by half via strengthening neural connections and boosting the speed of mental processing.
“Dementia is not an inevitable part of getting old”, says Dr Doug Brown, director of research and development at Alzheimer’s Society, . He wasn’t involved in developing the behaviour checklist but said it could raise awareness of the neuropsychiatric link with dementia. Speed training topped the other techniques in reducing the incidence of at-fault auto crashes and forestalling declines in health, and was the only intervention to protect against symptoms of depression.
Researchers examined records from 2,785 older adults who’d participated in a previous trial that compared three cognitive training strategies – to improve memory, reasoning or reaction times -with no intervention. One group received memory training, another received reasoning skills training, and the third took training that emphasized speed of brain processing.
– Complex jobs that require working with people may help the brain build resilience against dementia, what’s called “cognitive reserve”, University of Wisconsin researchers reported.
All told, 14% of subjects in the control group experienced significant cognitive decline.
Advertisement
Participants who did booster sessions, those who participated in 11 or more sessions of the computerized training showed a 48 percent reduction. As we’ve heard at AAIC this year, formal education and complex occupation could potentially do more than just slow cognitive decline – they may actually help compensate for the cognitive damage done by bad diet and small vessel disease in the brain.
