Early detection of memory loss and cognitive decline is crucial in the treatment of conditions such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. Scientists have now developed a simple memory test that could predict cognitive impairment in people years before the symptoms appear.
More than 16 million people in the United States live with cognitive impairment, wherein they have difficulty remembering, learning new things, concentrating or making decisions that affect their everyday life.
“There is increasing evidence that some people with no thinking and memory problems may actually have very subtle signs of early cognitive impairment. In our study, a sensitive and simple memory test predicted the risk of developing cognitive impairment in people who were otherwise considered to have normal cognition,” Ellen Grober, a study author and clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, said in a news release.
The researchers gave a simple memory test involving cards to 969 people with an average age of 69 who has no thinking or memory problems at the beginning of the study. They were then followed up for up to 10 years.
The memory test had two phases. In the first phase, the researchers asked the participants to look at four cards, each with drawings of four items. The participants were asked to identify each item belonging to a particular category, say when asked to identify fruit, they need to write grapes. The next phase involves recalling the items to measure the ability to retrieve information. When the participants forget certain items, they are given category cues to measure memory storage.
Based on their scores, the participants were divided into five groups, or stages zero through four, as part of the Stages of Objective Memory Impairment (SOMI) system.
A total of 47% of the participants were in stage zero, which represents people with no memory problems, while 35% were in stage one and 13% were in stage two. Stages one and two indicated increasing…
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