More Sensitve Tests for Predicting Alzheimer’s
The American Psychological Association‘s September issue of Neuropsychology includes two studies that may help clinicians and researchers better predict and understand dementia of the Alzheimer’s type early in its history. These studies are of extreme importance because medications currently available are only useful when given in the early course of the disease.
According to an article published by NewsWise, in the first study, psychologist Pauline Spaan, Ph.D. and Jeroen Raaijmakers, Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam in cooperation with neurologist Cees Jonker, M.D., Ph.D. from Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam analyzed the data from 119 participants in a longitudinal aging study. The researchers found that paired associate learning tests, the perceptual identification test and the visual association test, were very good at predicting who would develop Alzheimer’s by two years later. Equally important, the popular mini-mental status exam, a test mainly sensitive to episodic memory, was found not to be as good a predictor.
The second neuropsychological study established a psychological test to pick up early warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Designed at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis, Janet Duchek, Ph.D. and David Balota, Ph.D. look for information-processing breakdowns suspected to happen early in the disease, before the appearance of language and visual spacial problems. The study confirmed that attentional processing, like other cognitive processes, is affected early in Alzheimer’s disease.
The full article reporting on these new studies can be found here.
For more information about Alzheimer’s Disease, visit the Alzheimer’s Association.