Those who suffer from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease experience greater difficulty shifting attention back and forth between competing sources of information.
Lapses of Attention Early On
A new study of almost 100 patients, including both healthy individuals and ones diagnosed with mild Alzheimer's, indicates that lapses of attention may offer reliable evidence that a patient is grappling with early symptoms of Alzheimer's-related dementia.
Dichotic Listening
The patients were given dichotic listening tests, which make use of the fact that words heard in the left ear get processed on the right side of the brain, and vice-versa. The left hemisphere tends to be better at language processing, so words heard by the right ear have an advantage, in terms of attention, over different words heard at the same time by the left ear.
Participants were fed information to both ears simultaneously, and then asked to recall a string of numbers in the order they were presented to either ear; this measured their ability to use attention to overcome the tendency to favor information presented to the right ear.
Reliance on the "Default Channel"
Those demonstrating early signs of dementia relied on information they received from their right ears (what researchers referred to as the "default channel") and remembered it far better than numbers heard in their left ears. In fact, the mild dementia group recalled about 22 percent more information from their right ears, about four times as much as did the healthy control group (6 percent).
This confirms that, even very early in the disease, those who suffer from it have problems with selective attention. This may also explain why early-stage patients start to struggle with everyday tasks that call for processing a lot of information, such as driving.
Medication Only Useful in Early Stages
This offers clinicians and researchers another tool by with which they can predict and understand the disease; also, current medications are often only useful during the disease's early stages.
Memory problems also show up in early stages of the disease, but the study suggests that a decline in attention may be a contributing factor to the memory loss and other associated cognitive difficulties.
We are in the midst of an Alzheimer's epidemic. It's important that science continue to uncover simple ways to detect this devastating disease early on.
Experts have estimated that Alzheimer's will affect nearly 8 million people in the United States alone by 2030, and even those estimates may be significantly low. It truly is a looming public health epidemic, but since it is such a difficult disease to treat and there doesn't appear to be a cure in the near future, your best bet to addressing this disease is to take proactive preventive measures that minimize your risk of ever developing it in the first place.
It's important for you to know Alzheimer's is not a normal part of aging and there are many safe and simple ways to reduce your chances of succumbing to it. Here are some specific strategies you can use.