Published on: October 16, 2012
by Brandon Keim for Wired:
Diagnosing dementia early is both important and difficult. Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientist Anind Dey thinks he’s found a better way.
By embedding motion-detecting sensors in domestic objects, such as coffee machines and pill boxes, Dey can make informational representations of people performing everyday tasks. Doctors can then look at that data for subtle changes suggesting mental decline.
“Right now, the state of medicine being what it is, you have an occupational therapist come to your parents’ or grandparents’ house once every six months,” said Dey, who presented his dwellSense platform Oct. 16 at the Wired Health Conference in New York City. For a diagnosis in which a few months can make a difference, that’s not frequently enough.
So far, dwellSense has been tested with 14 elderly people in the Pittsburgh area. In addition to coffee-making and pill-taking, Dey’s group also tracked telephone-dialing. The information wasn’t used for medical purposes, but to see if they tracked with traditional cognitive test results. Dey said they did.
“They correlated very well with occupational therapist results,” Dey said. “It could catch problems more objectively, more quickly, than requiring an occupational therapist visit.”
The next stage of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project is collaboration with doctors who can give feedback on how best to present the data. “We want to get them engaged in trying to figure out how to abstract this information to a higher level and improve the conversation with their patients,” Dey said.
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/house-as-doctor
Older people who report greater levels of social engagement have more robust gray matter in regions of the brain relevant in dementia, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of...
In a new study, University of Nebraska–Lincoln sociologist Marc A. Garcia explored how educational attainment can benefit cognitive health in later life, and whether there are differences in its benefits among minorities. Garcia and his co-authors...
A genetic variation in some people may be associated with cognitive decline that can’t be explained by deposits of two key proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid β and tau, according to a study...
The material presented through the Think Tank feature on this website is in no way intended to replace professional medical care or attention by a qualified practitioner. WBHI strongly advises all questioners and viewers using this feature with health problems to consult a qualified physician, especially before starting any treatment. The materials provided on this website cannot and should not be used as a basis for diagnosis or choice of treatment. The materials are not exhaustive and cannot always respect all the most recent research in all areas of medicine.
