Visual Test Diagnosis

d'alz writes "A new research states that Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia can now be defined by a visual test based on images of faces and scenes. Research indicates that when people were asked to pick 'the odd on out' from a set of pictures of scenes and faces, those suffering from Alzheimer had difficulty picking out the odd scene. On the other hand those with semantic dementia had a problem with the faces. From the article: The findings, reported in the Journal of Neuroscience, support earlier research which suggested that different areas in a region of the brain called the Medial Temporal Lobe could be responsible for various aspects of memory and perception."

Comments

The Growing Problem of Alzheimer's

[eldavojohn]

This story might seem insignificant but what you don't realize is that Alzheimer's is a growing problem. Like many things, as the baby boomers begin to retire it will increase. People are living longer and, as a result, the genes responsible for Alzheimer's are being exposed. When evolution shaped us, there was no way to naturally select genes that didn't have Alzheimer's traits as our species was most likely dead by the time we hit that age.

As I understand it, Alzheimer's is caused by a twisted or malformed protein (beta amyloid) that starts to cause synapses of the brain to clump too close or cause their dendrites not to touch other synapses. Resulting in huge cognitive problems. There has also been research linking it to lipids and cholesterol intake.

What makes this research interesting is that I believe the idea in the field was that the gene mutation could be virus induced or suspected to not begin until one cell grew with the characteristics and successfully multiplied (often later in life). I'm not a medical researcher so don't quote me on any of this.

Unfortunately, since many of these baby boomers are fairly wealthy, more research will be going into Alzheimer's disease than AIDS as it will most likely be easier to market in developed nations. You can call me a conspiracy theorist but that's my honest opinion. Michael Chrichton pointed it out in Jarrasic Park when the park was built instead of something more useful like a cure for AIDS. You can charge people whatever you want to see dinosaurs but you can't charge them whatever you want to save their lives, it just looks immoral to do so.

Gene research is often the most politically frowned upon form of medical research but necessity breeds innovation ... er ... understanding. It will be interesting to see how far stem cell research and the like are allowed to proceed given a vast aging population in the United States. Currently, I've seen Alzheimer's research being done in the form of mammalian brain tissue introduced to a herpes virus that has previously infected cells which had the Alzheimer's gene. They then infect the new brain tissue but do not kill it (as herpes is not normally lethal to cells).