It’s estimated that almost 50 million people worldwide are living with dementia, and that number is expected to surpass 75 million in just 15 years and triple by 2050. However, researchers in Halifax are looking to fend off the dire predictions by better understanding the most common form of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease.
The team in the biotic research lab at the IWK Health Centre works hard to shed light on a variety of medical mysteries.
“We’re basically looking at the difference in brain activity between healthy people and people who have Alzheimer’s disease,” says Dr. Steve Patterson, lead scientist on the Alzheimer’s disease study.
Magnetoencephalography, or MEG, technology is used to monitor participants while they perform a series of memory based tasks.
“MEG measures the magnetic fields outside of your head that are produced by the neuro activity inside of your head,” says Patterson. “By measuring those fields, we can map neuro activity and figure out where in your brain activity is occurring.”
Suzanne Daniels is a research assistant on the project. She says patterns are starting to emerge in the participants with Alzheimer’s and memory problems.
“Our early data is showing that there is changes in the frontal lobe, so we are able to detect some changes in the brain and how it communicates with different networks,” says Daniels.
“When patients with Alzheimer’s successfully perform a task, they actually use more regions of their brain and different regions of their brain than healthy people,” says Patterson.
According to Patterson, this is direct evidence of neuro compensation.
“Neuro compensation is the idea that the healthy regions of your brain can work harder to make up for the damaged areas,” says Patterson.
Changes that occur in the brain with Alzheimer’s disease are subtle and can take place over many years. The combination of subtle changes and neuro compensation can make early diagnosis difficult.
“Some people think that changes can start as early as 20 years before you have clinical symptoms of the disease,” says Patterson.
With that in mind, the long-term goal of the study is to make early detection easier.
“Our goal is to try to detect this early, before damage has occurred because, often, when patients present with symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, the damage has already taken place,” says Daniels.
“It’s believed that some of the modern drug treatments are failing, not because the drugs aren’t effective, but because they’re applied too late in the course of the disease,” says Patterson. “So certainly, if we can understand the disease better and detect it earlier, it may play a role in helping patient outcomes.”
The study is still in the recruitment phase and looking for more participants. Patients must be 55 years or older and diagnosed with memory complaints, mild cognitive impairment, or Alzheimer’s disease.
