Scientists who now look at mild cognitive impairment as an early indicator of Alzheimer’s might have another tell-tale sign: Moodiness or behavioral changes, which they say show up in people who develop full-blown dementia.
Advertisement
While the researchers stress that the MBI-C needs to undergo performance testing, they believe it could be a useful tool for early Alzheimer’s diagnosis and prevention, helping to pinpoint the disease in the earliest stages of neurodegeneration – before memory problems arise.
Along with mild behavioral impairment, poor balance may also be an early warning sign of dementia. “Previous research has shown some promise for brain training in improving memory, although these small-scale studies have been inconclusive”.
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.
“We’re not talking about a blip in someone’s behavior”, said Dr. Zahinoor Ismail, of the University of Calgary’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute, in Canada.
Some forms of the illness spark unexpected changes in mood and behaviour as early as middle age. Each were also given an MRI scan to measure the thickness of the entorhinal cortex-the first area of the brain to be affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers at the conference proposed a checklist of symptoms to alert doctors and families. He wasn’t involved in developing the behavior checklist but said it could raise awareness of the neuropsychiatric link with dementia.
A protein called beta-amyloid builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease – forming into clumps and causing memory loss and confusion.
‘Early symptoms of dementia are often missed, and because behavioural changes can be common in mid-life they can often be put down to mid-life crisis, depression or the anxious well.
The new clinical trial results, presented Sunday at the Alzheimer’s Assn.’s International Conference in Toronto, establish specialized brain training as a potentially powerful strategy to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease and other afflictions, including normal aging, that sap memory and reduce function.
Their breakthrough raises the prospect that your optometrist will soon be checking for signs of dementia in addition to the quality of your vision. Brain training involves exercises on a computer with different relation games.
However, this does not mean that people with jobs that are not thought-provoking will somehow become victims of dementia. An example would be when a grandparent seems to lose interest in her grandchildren’s lives, Ismail said.
Another describes emotional symptoms, like depression, anxiety and irritability. The third group looks for problems in social interactions, like lack of empathy for others. The last group looks for evidence of issues in perception, with the person suffering even from hallucinations.
Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, affects more than 5 million people in the USA, a number growing as the population ages.
It’s this idea that enriched life experiences, like higher education or occupational complexity, can provide protection against Alzheimer’s disease pathology in the brain.
Advertisement
She found that the group that did speed training showed 33 percent less risk of dementia relative to the control group, while the memory and the reasoning interventions offered no such benefit.
