About a half million Americans die every year from Alzheimer’s disease. Diagnosing Alzheimer’s is costly; current tests cost around $3000 a pop. But researchers from Emory University have come up with a way to diagnose Alzheimer’s that can be accurate up to three years before memory loss sets in, and can be done from your computer. A 5-year study just finished that tested the brains of 92 seniors. The test showed participants two pictures, one familiar and the other not, then tracked the amount of time the participant’s eyes spent on each picture. People with a normal hippocampus spend more time looking at the unfamiliar picture, where people with a damaged hippocampus—like Alzheimer’s patients—spend the same amount of time looking at each. The study was successful and accurately diagnosed a mild impairment in 32 participants, which can be seen as pre-Alzheimer’s. Further research is being conducted in Shanghai, but the scientific community is on step closer to finding a cure to this tragic disease.
Diagnosing Alzheimer’s before memory loss
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