Detecting early Alzheimer’s disease-related memory issues

Remote cognitive assessments may recognize declines in memory in early Alzheimer’s disease.

In a study published in npj Digital Medicine, researchers assigned just over 200 participants aged 52 to 85 years with no or mild cognitive impairment to undergo self-administration of memory tasks using a smartphone or tablet in a remote and unsupervised setting. They sought to evaluate the participants’ object- and scene-based memory precision, associative memory and familiarity-dependent memory.

The researchers found that compared with those who had no cognitive impairment, the participants with mild cognitive impairment experienced greater declines in familiarity-dependent memory. Additionally, those in the mild cognitive impairment group who were beta-amyloid positive experienced poorer object-based memory precision and familiarity-dependent memory compared with those who were beta-amyloid negative.

The findings indicated that remote monitoring may be effective in detecting subtle changes in cognition in this patient population.

Read more: npj Digital Medicine

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