Today, when an aging parent, relative, or friend starts to forget things, a firm diagnosis can be surprisingly elusive.  

 

Even for Alzheimer’s disease, which is the most common dementia, clinicians lean on behavioral observations to diagnose patients. Brain scans and blood tests are much less conclusive. The most definitive diagnosis for any dementia only occurs after death. 

Individuals with an increased risk for dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease can have impaired spatial orientation skills. DZNE researchers come to this conclusion based on a study involving around 100 older adults who were tasked with determining their position within a virtual environment. In view of this, the current research results, published in the journal Science Advances, could pave the way for more sensitive testing methods. Potential areas of application include early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and drug studies.

Cognitive reserve (CR) is the brain's ability to maintain cognitive function despite age-related brain changes, damage or disease. It reflects an individual's capacity to cope with these changes by utilizing pre-existing cognitive strategies or developing compensatory mechanisms. The CR hypothesis presumes higher tolerance of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-related pathology without functional decline for those with high education yet more rapid decline after AD onset. However, evidence supporting the second part of the hypothesis has been largely confined to U.S.-based studies.

 

A new study by researchers from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

has found that people with more years of education lost their memory and thinking abilities faster after being diagnosed with AD, compared to those with less education. These findings now provide evidence for the CR theory using real-life data from older adults from England, Germany and France.