Detecting Dementia's Damaging Effects Before It's Too Late

A study published in Neuropsychologia found individuals with a rare neurodegenerative brain disorder known as Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) exhibited abnormalities in brain function in areas that look structurally normal on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, reports Medical Xpress . In examining this, the researchers learned the brain had functional defects in regions that were not yet indicating structural damage on MRI. The team compared brain scans of persons with PPA to healthy controls while both cohorts performed language tasks, and imaged participants' brains at rest. The functional defects correlated with worse performance in the tasks, as individuals with PPA lose their ability to speak or understand language while other aspects of cognition are typically retained. The research suggests spotting the discrepancy between a PPA brain's structural and functional integrity could find application as an early-detection method. University of Arizona Professor Aneta Kielar said these findings show promise because "many drugs designed to treat dementia are proving to be not really affective and that might be because we're detecting the brain damage too late."