by Lachlan Gilbert, University of New South Wales Credit: Shutterstock Testing for dementia among elderly could one day be as simple as talking into a smartphone thanks to speech-analyzing technology being developed by engineers at UNSW Sydney. An app that uses machine learning technology will look at paralinguistic features of a person’s speech—such as prosody, pitch,...
Tag: <span>Dementia</span>
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Bilingualism and dementia: How some patients lose their second language and rediscover their first
by David Murphy, Aedin Ni Loingsigh, Ingeborg Birnie and Thomas H Bak, The Conversation For many people with dementia, memories of early childhood appear more vivid than their fragile sense of the present. But what happens when the present is experienced through a different language than the one spoken in childhood? And how might carers...
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High waist circumference associated with elevated risk of obesity-related dementia
THE OBESITY SOCIETY SILVER SPRING, Md.–Waist circumference is a more accurate indicator of abdominal visceral fat level than body mass index (BMI) in the elderly, according to a report published in Obesity, the flagship journal of The Obesity Society. The study is the first large-scale cohort to examine the association of late-life waist circumference with...
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Researchers find high-intensity exercise improves memory in seniors
MCMASTER UNIVERSITY Researchers at McMaster University who examine the impact of exercise on the brain have found that high-intensity workouts improve memory in older adults. The study, published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, has widespread implications for treating dementia, a catastrophic disease that affects approximately half a million Canadians and is expected...
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High-salt diet may trigger dementia
By Dr. Liji Thomas, MD We’ve all heard that taking too much salt can damage your blood vessels, and now a new study published in the journal Nature on October 23, 2019, says it’s true – a diet rich in salt reduces the levels of nitric oxide, which in turn alters the tau protein within...
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Research improves understanding of mechanism of atrial fibrillation
by Baylor College of Medicine Atrial fibrillation is the most common heart arrhythmia in humans. This condition increases the risk of heart failure, stroke, dementia and death, and current treatments have suboptimal efficacy and carry side effects. Looking to identify clues that might lead to better treatments, a group headed by researchers at Baylor College...
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Early warning sign of dementia may be missed in women because they perform better at memory tests
Up to 10% of women pass tests for cognitive impairment when they should not This is important because cognitive impairment frequently leads to dementia If not picked up early, medications and lifestyle changes may not work as well By VICTORIA ALLEN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT FOR THE DAILY MAIL Memory problems may be missed in women because they perform better in certain tests than men. A study has found...
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Low blood pressure could be a culprit in dementia, studies suggest
by Kenneth McLeod, The Conversation Decline in brain function often occurs as people age. People often worry that declining brain function is an inevitable part of growing old and will lead to dementia, but it is not. Many people do not experience age-related cognitive decline. Clinical studies that have followed older individuals over many years have consistently...
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Stepwise approach effective for primary care dementia screening
Assessment of dementia risk using three common screening tools at baseline predicts incident dementia over the course of about seven years, according to a study published in the September/October issue of the Annals of Family Medicine. Lennard L. van Wanrooij, from the University of Amsterdam, and colleagues used data from 3,454 community-dwelling older persons who...
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The music therapy that helped Gabby Giffords speak again is getting dementia patients moving
by Stacey Burling Many of us know of music therapy as a way to soothe the troubled and stressed or to activate memories of favorite songs embedded deeply in the minds of people with dementia. For her exercise classes in the nursing home at Paul’s Run, a retirement community in Northeast Philadelphia, music therapist Molly Bybee taps the emotional power of music. But she...