Project Overview
Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder of aging that causes problems with thinking and remembering. Since the Canadian population is, on average, getting older, Alzheimer’s represents one of the biggest issues facing our society. We know that some interventions like exercise and diet can help people resist developing Alzheimer’s disease, but unfortunately it is very difficult to know who is starting to show “brain signs” of the disease early enough for these interventions to work. The best tools we have for this currently are rare, invasive, or both. New low-risk, widely-available tools to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease in people who otherwise seem healthy are desperately needed.
Our recent research suggests that non-invasive measures of brain signaling with magnetoencephalography (MEG) may represent such a tool. These measures tell us how much a person’s brain is reacting to harmful Alzheimer’s proteins before they develop problems with remembering and thinking and can then predict who is going to eventually develop these problems. Our new project will test whether these Alzheimer’s disease “brain reactions” can be detected in older adults who are at higher risk for developing the disease. It will also test whether these brain changes can be detected using a much less expensive and more widely-available tool called electroencephalography (EEG).
The findings from this research could be used to develop a new, low-cost screening tool for detecting Alzheimer’s disease in older adults who do not have symptoms. This will be incredibly useful both for doctors who diagnose the disease, and for scientists who need to screen for signs of Alzheimer’s disease to decide who should be included in clinical trials. Our work will also give us new information about which Alzheimer’s disease risk factors, such as exercise, diet, and air quality, have the strongest effect on brain health.
Partners & Donors
CIHR Institute of Aging
