Cognitive Labs

Mayo Clinic Scientist Dr. Ron Peterson presented data at the International Alzheimer's Conference in Chicago that shows an astounding increase, particularly in men, in what was presented to the world media as Pre-Dementia.

Pre-Dementia, one form of which is sometimes called MCI, or Mild Cognitive Impairment, refers to decline in cognitive ability amongst younger adults that may become Alzheimer's.

Breathtakingly, up to 1 million people every year in the U.S. are new sufferers of pre-Dementia, not including the 500,000 people per annum who are diagnosed with Alzheimer's by a physician.

"We're seeing that in fact there's a much larger burgeoning problem out there" of people at risk of developing dementia, said Dr. Ronald Petersen, the Mayo scientist who led the study.

Dr. Ralph Nixon, a New York University psychiatrist and scientific adviser to the Alzheimer's Association, was blunt.

"We're facing a crisis," he said.

There are no treatments now to prevent this mental slide or reverse it once it starts.

But that may be changing. Researchers on Monday reported early, somewhat encouraging results from an experimental nose spray that seemed to improve certain memory measures in a study of mildly impaired people.

The drug, for now just called AL-108, needs testing in a longer, larger study. It is being developed by Allon Therapeutics Inc., based in Vancouver, B.C.

Doctors said it shows the potential for new types of medicines that target the protein tangles that kill nerve cells, instead of targeting the sticky brain deposits that have gotten most of the attention up to now.

The studies were reported at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Chicago.

Petersen is the scientist who defined mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, as a transition phase between healthy aging and dementia. It is more than "senior moments" like forgetting where you parked the car, but not as severe as having dementia, where you forget what a car is for.

People with it have impaired memory but not other problems like confusion, inattention or trouble putting thoughts into words.

The Alzheimer's Association says more than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's, but no estimate for this "pre-dementia" has been available until now.

Petersen's federally funded study involved roughly 1,600 people, ages 70 through 89, living in Olmstead County, which surrounds the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. All tested normal when they were enrolled in the study, but more than 5 percent had developed mild impairment when evaluated a year later.

Men were nearly twice as likely as women to develop it. That's a surprise, because some studies have found more women with Alzheimer's than men. But there may be a simple explanation:

Even though more men may be impaired, women outlive them and therefore have more time to develop full-blown dementia.

"This is a very large and important issue for our country and for the world," said Duke University psychologist Brenda Plassman. A smaller study she published earlier this year backs up the Mayo study's findings.

The mild impairment rate is two to three times larger than many researchers had expected, Petersen said.

"It's the iceberg under the tip," agreed Dr. R. Scott Turner, incoming director of the memory disorders program at Georgetown University Medical Center. A prime goal is finding drugs to treat the mild impairment before Alzheimer's develops.

Labels: alzheimers, association, MCI, peterson, preDementia

Clarke in 1952.

The Arthur C. Clarke retrospective is now live. Clarke had a phenomenal impact on science fiction and popular science with the gift to communicate complex scenarios based on advanced physics and cosmology in a way that they could be understood by everyone, without being patronizing - even when the stories were somewhat scientific and obscure in nature. He exhibited, and was able to inspire, a natural curiosity in the world around us.


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Buy all means, add a mosaic(above)to your site. It should work automatically - if not, add a line-break to the source code and there it is.

This series of exercises focuses on the question of artificial or robotic cognitive impairment in the form of HAL 9000; and we have livened the pages with an original audio mash-up from the film, including the scene where Hal sings the 19th century song "Daisy."

A Boy's Life of Cosmic Wonder - New York Times

Arthur C. Clarke: The Wired Worlds (Wired)

Arthur C. Clarke in Entertainment Weekly


5 Reasons Why We'll Miss Arthur C. Clarke - Mental Floss

Listen to the story "Exile of the Eons" (Nemesis) (mp3) about the folly of world conquest

Labels: 2001, chandra, clarke, floyd, hal9000, kubrick, MCI, odyssey marine, sciencefiction, spacce, urbana

// posted by neurofuture8:13 PM permanent link

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  tags: take a quick memory test | games for your brain | moving pix for your brain | gamer IQ

MCI is "mild cognitive impairment." According to this WebMD story, it's prevalence is both understated and increasing.

This topic is one we have spent considerable time over the past several years researching, interviewing the top scientific experts, knowledgeable physicians (many times both categories embody the same individual), caregiving people, and researchers in aligned fields that you might say, are tangential.

The reason is that some have believed MCI was a precursor to Alzheimer's, some in fact that it was Alzheimer's - in early gestation, while others believed that MCI was a catchall category for undiagnosed, relatively asymptomatic memory loss attributable to a variety of factors ranging from cardiovascular disease to depression and sleeplessness.

However, it now appears that it is a definable condition and also that it occurs frequently. One thing is certain: people are going to live longer in the future, and therefore MCI is going to become a very big problem. Scientific consensus seems to be that cancer and cardio issues are being minimized and 'rolled back' a little more every few years, which contributes to the boom in longevity.

Once aging is slowed, which is already happening and has progressed at a steady pace since 1900 (Gompertz analysis) our biggest problem is going to be our perishable brains and mental faculties. The hard disk in our head gets corrupted, meaning that the software of life (consciousness, executive function, auto life-support aps like breathing) gets an ellipsis and cease to function.
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stop

and that's it. If we cannot stop Alzheimer's, then it will become the terminal point of each person's life, given an extended lifespan.

The only other option (unfeasible at the moment) is to record consciousness and memories via artificial or bioorganic attahments, and then transfer this essence to a robot or an engineered replacement body. In this way, a single consciousness could span numerous lifetimes.

Labels: bioorganic, MCI, webMD

A case study appearing in the Chicago Tribune:

Three years ago, Ginny and Gene Neal of Rockford were looking forward to a sunny retirement, when they could cut back on work and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Then an incurable disease robbed them of the future they had planned.

At age 55, Gene was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He had to give up his truck-parts business, leaving Ginny as the sole breadwinner.

"What was supposed to be our retirement money will have to go toward help for Gene," Ginny said. Mornings, a caregiver comes to their house to help Gene. Afternoons, one of his grown daughters stays with him.

"Talking to people ..." was Gene's response when asked what he misses the most, now that he can no longer work or drive. "The loneliness -- that's the hardest part," said Ginny, who has to finish her husband's sentences.

When Gene said he can "do some things," Ginny added that he can, for example, mow the lawn if someone starts the mower for him.

Each year, about 500,000 Americans are diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, said Melanie Chavin, vice president of program services for the Alzheimer's Association -- Greater Illinois Chapter. Although doctors cannot diagnose this disease conclusively without autopsies, she added, they can be "95 percent sure by conducting memory and language tests."

Read the article

Labels: 500000, alz.org, early onset alzheimers, MCI