Alzheimers

It’s in your eyes


Video: Coloured dots at the back of the eye announce cell death due to Alzheimer’s

Your eyes reveal a lot about you, and now that includes the health of your brain. A new way of counting dying eye cells could allow Alzheimer’s disease to be diagnosed and treated in its early stages. Read full article

Source: New Scientist

Forgot where you put your car keys? Having trouble recalling your colleague’s name? If so, this may be a symptom of subjective cognitive impairment
(SCI)
, the earliest sign of cognitive decline marked by situations such as when a person recognizes they can’t remember a name like they used to or where they recently placed important objects the way they used to. Studies have shown that SCI is experienced by between one-quarter and one-half of the population over the age of 65. A new study, published in the January 11, 2010, issue of the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, finds that healthy older adults reporting SCI are 4.5 times more likely to progress to the more advanced memory-loss stages of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia than those free of SCI.

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Music triggers memories in dementia patients



One of the raps on iPods is that users tend to close themselves off from other people and retreat into their own private world.But with stroke and dementia patients, iPods and other MP3 players are having just the opposite effect.
Listening to rap and reggae on a borrowed iPod every day has helped Everett Dixon, a 28-year-old stroke victim at Beth Abraham Health Services in Bronx, N.Y., learn to walk and use his hands again.
revor Gibbons, 52, who fell out of a fourth-floor construction site and suffered a crushed larynx, has become so entranced with music that he’s written 400 songs and cut four CDs…. link to read full article

Source: Wall Street Journal