A new study reveals how smartphone technology can help spot early signs of dementia, offering hope for timely intervention and treatment.
In a significant breakthrough, researchers at DZNE and Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg in Germany have harnessed smartphone technology to identify individuals at an elevated risk for dementia. This innovative approach utilizes mobility data collected during a smartphone-based wayfinding task, shedding new light on the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.
The findings, recently published in PLOS Digital Health, underscore the potential of utilizing everyday technology for health care advancements.
The study focused on 72 adults, with approximately one-third diagnosed with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), a known precursor to dementia.
“Currently, Alzheimer’s is often treated too late to ensure effective therapy. Even the new antibody drugs that are being much discussed at the moment only work if they are given at an early stage. Thus, we need to be able to diagnose the disease earlier, when symptoms are still mild. This requires advances in diagnostics,” Anne Maass, a research group leader at DZNE and a guest professor at the University Magdeburg, said in a news release.
The participants engaged in a scavenger hunt on the university campus, guided by a custom smartphone app that tracked their movement patterns via GPS.
As Dr. Nadine Diersch, who initiated the research, explained in the news release, “Our study is based on a kind of scavenger hunt where participants had to find pre-specified points-of-interest. For this, they used a smartphone equipped with a special app that we developed.”
The task required participants to memorize the layout of the campus, navigate to various buildings and make use of their spatial memory and sense of direction. In total, the participants aimed to visit five buildings along an 800-meter route. The app periodically displayed a map and their current position but removed the map once they started walking.
“If they got lost, they could press a help button in the app. The map, their position and their destination would then briefly reappear,” added first author Jonas Marquardt, a doctoral student in Maass’ group.
The results indicated that older adults with SCD paused more frequently at intersections, suggesting hesitation and altered decision-making processes, which are potential markers for cognitive decline.
“We found that certain app data allow to reliably identify people with an increased risk for dementia,” added Diersch.
The implications of these findings are profound. They suggest that digital tools, like smartphone apps, could revolutionize early dementia detection by providing a low-barrier, realistic assessment of cognitive function.
“This shows that digital technologies, like mobile apps, offer completely new possibilities to assess cognitive functioning under realistic, low-threshold conditions. In the future, this, may help detect subtle cognitive changes and thus harbingers of dementia earlier than today,” Diersch added.
This innovative approach opens new pathways for early diagnosis and intervention, potentially leading to more effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Looking ahead, the integration of such technology into routine health assessments could become a key component in tackling dementia worldwide.