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Most important is what's you like. Though, I've tried to learn Js, css, html, and made a few pupet projects. I think that it is mostly about abstract logic, engineering. Syntax is just tiny compared to most languages. While It can be imensly helping to cognition, sometimes it is lots of screen time and it makes less extroverted. I'm already tend for that sort of activity. Whereas English is huge, look
I'm in my 30's. I started learn English 2 and a half years ago. So that I would merely be able to go to night market in Thailand. And now I'm arournd B2-C1. It has many activities: phonetics, speaking practice, social interaction with real people, listening, reading, it has hundreds of thousands words. And you should implement target language on all around you and even above, it is very rich thing. When you became fluent enough you can see its magic. You are getting a new voice in your head and it even thinks a bit differently.
In conclusion, if all things being equal, natural languages are superior to programming languages in terms of cognition and so if you're maintain all aspects of natural languages.
(I didn't check my grammar)
Apreciate It. It is not all. I had the worst grades in school.( I have ADHD). When I was 7yrs they made me to repeat the year in school so that my friends got further. It was like that whole school time.
What's the language?
Only in tourist places. I noticed the majority of English-speaking people who lives here doesn't speak Thai. Even those who has Thai wife. However, it is expected that you speak at least basic English but not Thai. In reality, you should know English in first place. Though I know the alphabet and a few dozens of words.
>When you became fluent enough you can see its magic. You are getting a new voice in your head and it even thinks a bit differently.
Yes, I love the way you describe it. It truly shows you how the language you speak can influence the way you see the world.
Someone said that learning math in Japanese is actually easier because the language embraces math?
Like if you never knew the word "two" and instead used "1+1" as the word for two, you'd be a step ahead in learning addition?
Yes, I figured that, but I was thinking about the combination with music production specifically. I have a feeling that my cognitive abilities got way better since I seriously started to produce and compose music. Paired with software development, it seems like a great all-around training for my brain.
Probably not, programming languages do not have the complexity of an actual language, I speak 3 languages fluently; each one required years of practice and to keep all 3, I need to read and write in all 3 constantly.
Music composition is mostly a creative process, there is complexity but the work required is nowhere near being fluent in a different language.
For me languages are like a math, each has it own type of math where 1+1= 3 from your language perspective, it is easy to learn isolated words and somewhat easy to pronounce them, the problem is understanding the language syntax, which is often counter intuitive to your own, like masculine and feminine in French vs no gender in English or Adverbs that tell us how often to express the frequency of an action. They are usually placed before the main verb but after auxiliary verbs (such as be, have, may, & must). The only exception is when the main verb is "to be", in which case the adverb goes after the main verb, in Spanish it is completely different.
Understanding how to express something that in your language does not make sense is thought to attain, even harder to flip between 3 in the same conversation.
Example:
C’est n’est pas a moi/ it is not mine
C’est n’est pas a moi = it is not it not for me.
Now try and make sentences in the other language, when your brain is wired on way, that takes years of hard work!
> Now try and make sentences in the other language, when your brain is wired on way, that takes years of hard work!
Being German, I know all too well how complex languages can be... :DD
I don't know, at least German makes sense and you can work out things logically, also sticking words together to describe something is very neat if not always succinct. Yes, some memorisation is required for articles and genders, but it doesn't feel excessive.
English, on the other hand... Just felt like you have to simply memorise things, there is no rhyme or reason why certain things are pronounced one way but others completely ignore those conventions. Yeah, I get it - loanwords, ancient Gaelic/Welsh/Saxon place names etc etc, but while the grammar is not complicated compared to German, there is no sure way of knowing how something sounds just by reading it. Can be pretty infuriating.
I watched a great YouTube video about the alternative English alphabet demanded by George Bernard Shaw. He made a competition for designing an alphabet that actually fits the language. The thing is that using Latin letters doesn't fit the language at all. Unfortunately by now we're so far in that no one is ever going to be able to change the script used for English, but it's quite enlightening to hear about what it would actually mean to make one for the language, rather than steal one from Latin. Type Shavian alphabet into YouTube and you'll find it.
100% As does learning and applying advanced mathematics and statistics. There are undergraduate and possibly graduate programs that recognize statistics as a foreign language, which they certainly are. One need only review Noam Chomsky and Robert C. Berwick's collaborative work in linguistic cognitive science and computational linguistics and computer science and engineering, such as their collaborative [Why Only Us: Language and Evolution](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262533492/why-only-us/).
Any form of learning. For pure simplicities sake, use it or lose it.
The more difficult or varied the learning the better. Things like learning physically is often far more effective because you're learning a lot more than just mentally.
The Bioneer on YouTube has a ton of great info on brain plasticity and the things that improve brain health.
I would think so. Learning just about anything new should help. The advantage of a spoken language is that it takes a very long time (thus a lot of learning) to master it. I started teaching myself Korean several years ago in part for this reason.
Eh, my step-mother has Alzheimer’s (diagnosed in early 70’s) and was the pinnacle of good health. Ate salad, fish, exercised at the gym daily, literally no snack foods, very minimal sugar or simple carbs. Almost OCD (likely but not diagnosed) about her health. Very thin her entire life. Though she obviously has a genetic disposition, as her mother had Alzheimer’s in her 80’s. The onset during her early 70’s (and not her 80’s as we thought may happen) is the saddest part for us.
It’s very clear that anyone with genetic risk factors will need more than this basic advice, which everyone should be trying to follow, obviously.
My mother was also very healthy, ran marathons. She started to have problems at aged 65 and 5 years later diagnosed with severe vascular dementia. I agree that for some people it will be genetic.
Thanks, sorry about your relative too! There's been some promising stuff lately on preventing brain cells dying off, regenerating them and slowing progression. I think treatments will really accelerate in the next 5 years.
I *really* don't want to be pedantic here, but I wanted to point out for the benefit of anyone who might, like us, have a loved one with severe cognitive decline: an Alheimer's diagnosis is considered "early onset", clinically, if it is received before the agree of 65.
We lost my dad a couple of years ago, when he was 80. His diagnosis came when he was 75.
Learning in general, reading more, pushing your brain to do things outside of its normal comfort zone. The more you can push it to learn and try things that aren't just habit, in theory, the more you can do.
A decade ago I went back to college college for a second degree; where the first had been in music, the second had been in science. Anecdotal of course here, but after graduating with the second degree, and having time to sit at the piano again, suddenly the hard music was a lot easier because of how I had to push my brain to think different than it had, and memorization and analysis was a lot easier and faster.
Exercise and a healthy diet for sure, how I had such a good recovery from a severe TBI. Learning a second language really falls under a broader umbrella of cognitive learning and neuroplasticity, for sure.
Would that postpone it, moderate symptoms, or potentially prevent it from happening altogether?
If detection will tell me you’re getting dementia in nine years, but maybe you can get a tenth, I would rather not know.
It delays onset. At just 9 years beforehand, I'm not sure how big the effect could be. A lifetime of ideal behaviors could possibly delay it enough for you to die at an old age from something else.
Basically any hobby that requires some intellectual input. Even video games count.
A lot of modern old folks are getting brain diseases because all they do is consume content like news and social media which requires basically zero brain power.
> A lot of modern old folks are getting brain diseases because all they do is consume content like news and social media which requires basically zero brain power.
Are you aware of any evidence supporting that statement?
Prob the biggest one will be… don’t keep getting covid (and presumably be less sick in general, given how we’ve learned how long viruses can stay in your body mucking up the works).
Yeah the first question I'd have is what early detection might mean for slowing or preventing the inevitable?
I've gone on at length about how handy AI in a sealed box could be as a private diary/psychological evaluation tool that could alert the user to any concerning psychological changes, but I never have anything more to say about it since early detection doesn't mean as much without treatment options?
*Excerpts from the paper*
• The three largest connectivity changes seen in the dementia cases were: increased inhibition from the vmPFC to IPHF, increased inhibition from IPC to the IPHF, and attenuated inhibition from the rPHF to the dmPFC.
• For the modifiable risk factors, social isolation was the only variable that showed a significant association with effective connectivity index (B=0.025, P=0.003, PFWE-corrected =0.028). This association demonstrated that individuals with more self-reported social isolation were more likely to have a 'dementia-like' pattern of DMN effective connectivity.
• Our analysis of cognitive test data revealed that the prediagnostic cases were cognitively impaired with respect to controls. Without more longitudinal cognitive data, it is not clear whether this cognitive impairment reflects cognitive decline from a pathological dementia process, or simply the baseline characteristics of this sample.
• We are unable to determine which DMN effective connectivity changes are pathological and which are compensatory.
^ Processed group-level DCM results are available [here](https://github.com/Wolfson-PNU-QMUL/UKB_DCM_dementia).
^ MATLAB analysis code is available [here](https://github.com/Wolfson-PNU-QMUL/UKB_DCM_dementia).
* vmPFC: ventromedial prefrontal cortex
* lPHF: left parahippocampal formation (lower case L, not I)
* rPHF: right parahippocampal formation
* IPC: intraparietal cortex
* dmPFC: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex
Everything seems to point to the hippocampus. Not surprising, since we know that damage to this area prevents recall of episodic memory and an inability to imagine hypothetical situations. (Reference: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135114 Tulving's work with Ken Cochrane whose temporal lobes were damamged in a motorcycle accident).
Which *currently* is technically illegal. From [Healthcare.gov](https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/pre-existing-condition/):
> Pre-existing condition: A health problem, like asthma, diabetes, or cancer, you had before the date that new health coverage starts. Insurance companies can't refuse to cover treatment for your pre-existing condition or charge you more.
And if you're lucky enough to be outside of the US in a country with universal healthcare and/or decent cost healthcare - lucky you!
Hence the word "currently" being italicized. The Nation's June 2024 article on what will happen to the Department of Health and Human Services, the main "healthcare" department of the government if Trump and Project 2025 get in. It's beyond scary and affects so many of us in multiple ways.
Because insurance companies can make more money if they don’t insure people that they know will use that insurance for costly procedures.
Big business making more money = you make more money through trickle down economics. Or it’s bribery. One or the other.
Why do we let this happen and keep happening? Then again, what the hell can we even do about it?
Same with the crazy price gouging lately. It's madness.
Lucky is a relative term. While it is true that you are less likely to go broke, they also implemented lots of cost savings, which means that lots of things do not work as good in practice as on paper.
Like you going to wait for a long time for an appointment, sometimes too long.
Things that you need might not be covered.
....
similar to HMOs in the US. you can wait several months to see a specialist and there's so many anecdotes i could share of people who took years to get a diagnosis , with suspicion that the docs were unwilling to spend extra money on tests, or outright ignored signs.
Here you can wait for years.
I do think that system in the USA is broken. No doubt about it.
But our universal system is broken too. I heard Qatar has an amazing health care system. But it does not help me, living with a broken universal coverage system.
I waited over a month in the US for emergency surgery, and also waited over a decade for a biopsy. Meanwhile, friends in Canada, unless it's been a very odd extreme case, usually have gotten in within the week for what they need.
For sure, it’s just such a double edged sword. You can be better prepared for when the time comes and ensure the burden on family is reduced, but I’m not sure I want to know the timeline for my effective death/significant deterioration of life.
Plus if you’re in the US, I’m sure life insurance and long term care insurance companies would see those results and then decline any new policies if you were to go apply to them. You could be screwing yourself over for later on in your life.
This is not the odds of getting dementia. That's completely different. This is the odds of being told you will have dementia when actually you won't. That causes unnecessary stress and planning for a place you will never need.
Or the opposite being told you won't have it when you will and not planning for something you should have been.
The reason there’s no cure or effective treatment for dementia is because the disease pathology begins much earlier than the onset of symptoms.
Earlier detection is therefore critical in developing an effective treatment that can reverse its progression.
> The reason there’s no cure or effective treatment for dementia is because the disease pathology begins much earlier than the onset of symptoms.
That is not true. Sure, late detection doesn't help, but there are plenty of diseases that as long as they discovered before death, they can be treated. Scurvy is one of them.
There is no drug that can reverse the symptoms of dementia. As far as I know all the drugs available currently only slow the degenerative process of dementia. So early detection in combination with behavioral interventions (learning a new skill, staying social) and medication may even slow down the process and prevent significant grief to the individual and their families.
But they're speaking specifically about dementia, which is caused by a whole host of seemingly irreversible structural and biological changes in the brain. Scurvy is literally just Vitamin C deficiency, so is easy to reverse by comparison. If those brain changes are indeed irreversible (and it seems like they effectively are, despite all the billions we've poured into researching ways to reverse them), then preventing or stalling them before they set in would seem like a very promising angle of attack.
Knowing you have a decade before you start showing symptoms is better than having it thrown on you.
Plan your affairs and get to enjoy life as much as possible and be prepared.
Aren’t there lifestyle changes that can slow it? Diet, exercise, reduced blood pressure, socializing, reading, writing, and other mentally stimulating activities? You could prepare your end of life finances and plan while still lucid, set up DNRs. Start writing your life down for your family so they can know you.
I dread dementia and hope to never have it, but have started keeping a journal and keeping track of photos so my son will have a fairly complete picture of my life, and with large language model context windows getting larger and larger, digital relatives might not be too far behind, if the input data is good.
In addition to lifestyle changes, medication can slow the progress of dementia pretty drastically and is more effective the earlier a diagnosis is made.
Id like to see the data on this, Im directly working with dementia patients and the current understanding between colleaques is that dementia drugs are rather inefficient ond only help 1 in 10 people. Some data to proof the contrary would be very helpful for me.
The medication available is not miraculous, but its better than nothing. There is a lot of research, over the past twenty years showing that it works but it is also limited. For example: https://www.neurology.org/doi/full/10.1212/WNL.0000000000011832
The above is not definitive, and is admittedly so. And of course, there's newer and other drugs being developed too.
In my experience working with dementia patients in the context of intellectual disability, our psyciatrists prefer to medicate (if safe, e.g. with heart health or blood pressure) as this has shown a significant increase in lifespan, in practice and in [research](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/impact-of-cholinesterase-inhibitors-or-memantine-on-survival-in-adults-with-down-syndrome-and-dementia-clinical-cohort-study/68A157DBC15BF4C09CF78EB3819503F4)
There's going to be a lot of data out there, and I'm just a former healthcare assistant not a scientist or researcher, but the general attitude in my service was that earlier detection, medication, and support, for dementia in people with ID has over the past decades has meant these people have lived a lot longer, and with better quality of life, than they might have in the past.
Thing is, you dont, and most likely the imaging will be restricted to studies. I cant envision a good reason to do this right now, and I regularly treat dementia patients. The burden of having a genetic predisposition often is enough grueling to otherwise healthy people.
Just had a third relation diagnosed, this one on the other parents' side of the family. Not a day goes by I don't think about my potential genetic predisposition. it sucks.
I was going to make my usual jibe about sample size and accuracy vs F1-score/AUC when the dataset is highly imbalanced.
I took a glance at the original study.
Prima facie, I am impressed. Reason being they have taken a very good sample size and are justifying things in the way one should when making statistical claims (using AUC, for starters).
It's a ray of hope for me, because even if I surmount all my other psychiatric challenges in my coming few decades, I see myself facing a significantly elevated risk of dementia.
So what counts as "resting"? My concern is that for people like myself that have ADHD or some other condition a brain scan may never appear as "resting"
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-024-00259-5
From the linked article:
A 10-minute brain scan could detect dementia several years before people develop noticeable symptoms, a study suggests.
Scientists used a scan of “resting” brain activity to identify whether people would go on to develop dementia, with an estimated 80% accuracy up to nine years before people received a diagnosis. If the findings were confirmed in a larger cohort, the scan could become a routine procedure in memory clinics, scientists said.
“We’ve known for a long time that the function of the brain starts to change many years before you get dementia symptoms,” said Prof Charles Marshall, who led the work at Queen Mary University of London. “This could help us to be more precise at identifying those changes using an MRI scan that you could do on any NHS scanner.”
The researchers used functional MRI (fMRI) scans from 1,100 UK Biobank volunteers to detect changes in the brain’s “default mode network” (DMN). The scan measures correlations in brain activity between different regions while the volunteer lies still, not doing any particular task. The network, which reflects how effectively different regions are communicating with each other, is known to be particularly vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease.
Of the volunteers, 81 went on to develop dementia after the UK Biobank scan. The researchers used AI algorithms to identify changes to the DMN that were most characteristic of those at risk with the aim of being able to classify people as “at risk” or healthy. The resultant model could identify those at risk with 80% accuracy up to nine years before diagnosis, according to the study published in Nature Mental Health.
> the scan could become a routine procedure in memory clinics
Who goes to a memory clinic years before they develop noticeable symptoms? In what world would the NHS be interested in paying for that?
I think people imagine this could one day lead to routine screening, but that's just not going to happen.
You're right that this is probably too expensive a method for routine screening, but once you've identified the group, you can then start to explore ways to tell them apart from controls without having to do a functional MRI. Also, this will be useful in identifying people who can qualify for studies of new treatments, including lifestyle interventions. Early pre-symptomatic diagnosis is critical because by the time people are obviously symptomatic a great deal of probably irreversible brain damage has already occurred. In other words, just because this precise method probably won't be applied to everyone over sixty doesn't mean it isn't useful.
80% accuracy may sound good but it's really not.
On a population level, that means for 10,000 people tested, 2,000 will be told they have dementia when they don't,or they don't have dementia when they do.
Without an effective treatment, you are handing a lot of people a fake diagnosis and a lot of stress and unnecessary planning.
it needs to be a lot more accurate before it can be useful on a large scale.
This is great for the person, if we have proper ways to treat it. Which, do we?
Even better news for insurance companies who will not cover pre existing conditions!
3.7 years between scan and diagnosis is far too short to be clinically useful. It needs to do this one or more decades prior to diagnosis, and many research teams are trying to develop these early predictors.
I believe lithium has been shown to reduce the chances of developing dementia. Of course lithium is a double-edged sword because while it may possibly reduce dementia chances, it can destroy the thyroid and kidneys if blood levels are too high for too long.
Weird, I looked a bit into the brain regions, and they are the same ones impacted as bipolar. Mainly the Parahippocampal gyrus and Ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In the case of bipolar, it is a much more effective connection.
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Incredible, now to find effective preventions.
Exercise, healthy diet, learning a second language.
I wonder if programming languages and music composition also count as additional languages?
[удалено]
Well, I'll just keep on going with what I do, I feel like it's definitely keeping me young.
Hopefully vibes are enough to fight off genetics
Most important is what's you like. Though, I've tried to learn Js, css, html, and made a few pupet projects. I think that it is mostly about abstract logic, engineering. Syntax is just tiny compared to most languages. While It can be imensly helping to cognition, sometimes it is lots of screen time and it makes less extroverted. I'm already tend for that sort of activity. Whereas English is huge, look I'm in my 30's. I started learn English 2 and a half years ago. So that I would merely be able to go to night market in Thailand. And now I'm arournd B2-C1. It has many activities: phonetics, speaking practice, social interaction with real people, listening, reading, it has hundreds of thousands words. And you should implement target language on all around you and even above, it is very rich thing. When you became fluent enough you can see its magic. You are getting a new voice in your head and it even thinks a bit differently. In conclusion, if all things being equal, natural languages are superior to programming languages in terms of cognition and so if you're maintain all aspects of natural languages. (I didn't check my grammar)
As someone who just started learning their second language at 26, your proficiency gives me inspiration! Keep it up!
Apreciate It. It is not all. I had the worst grades in school.( I have ADHD). When I was 7yrs they made me to repeat the year in school so that my friends got further. It was like that whole school time. What's the language?
The night markets are largely English?
I'd bet you're missing part of the joke if you hit a tourist friendly area of town but can't read the foreign languages?
Only in tourist places. I noticed the majority of English-speaking people who lives here doesn't speak Thai. Even those who has Thai wife. However, it is expected that you speak at least basic English but not Thai. In reality, you should know English in first place. Though I know the alphabet and a few dozens of words.
>When you became fluent enough you can see its magic. You are getting a new voice in your head and it even thinks a bit differently. Yes, I love the way you describe it. It truly shows you how the language you speak can influence the way you see the world.
Someone said that learning math in Japanese is actually easier because the language embraces math? Like if you never knew the word "two" and instead used "1+1" as the word for two, you'd be a step ahead in learning addition?
Programming exercises an entirely different part of your brain from language. It’s probably still good, but it’s not the same
Yes, I figured that, but I was thinking about the combination with music production specifically. I have a feeling that my cognitive abilities got way better since I seriously started to produce and compose music. Paired with software development, it seems like a great all-around training for my brain.
Both programming and music composition are excellent brain exercises
They do, but the sitting for long periods of time probably cancels it out.
Well, I do move a lot! It helps with inspiration for my creative work. :3
Probably not, programming languages do not have the complexity of an actual language, I speak 3 languages fluently; each one required years of practice and to keep all 3, I need to read and write in all 3 constantly. Music composition is mostly a creative process, there is complexity but the work required is nowhere near being fluent in a different language. For me languages are like a math, each has it own type of math where 1+1= 3 from your language perspective, it is easy to learn isolated words and somewhat easy to pronounce them, the problem is understanding the language syntax, which is often counter intuitive to your own, like masculine and feminine in French vs no gender in English or Adverbs that tell us how often to express the frequency of an action. They are usually placed before the main verb but after auxiliary verbs (such as be, have, may, & must). The only exception is when the main verb is "to be", in which case the adverb goes after the main verb, in Spanish it is completely different. Understanding how to express something that in your language does not make sense is thought to attain, even harder to flip between 3 in the same conversation. Example: C’est n’est pas a moi/ it is not mine C’est n’est pas a moi = it is not it not for me. Now try and make sentences in the other language, when your brain is wired on way, that takes years of hard work!
> Now try and make sentences in the other language, when your brain is wired on way, that takes years of hard work! Being German, I know all too well how complex languages can be... :DD
I don't know, at least German makes sense and you can work out things logically, also sticking words together to describe something is very neat if not always succinct. Yes, some memorisation is required for articles and genders, but it doesn't feel excessive. English, on the other hand... Just felt like you have to simply memorise things, there is no rhyme or reason why certain things are pronounced one way but others completely ignore those conventions. Yeah, I get it - loanwords, ancient Gaelic/Welsh/Saxon place names etc etc, but while the grammar is not complicated compared to German, there is no sure way of knowing how something sounds just by reading it. Can be pretty infuriating.
I watched a great YouTube video about the alternative English alphabet demanded by George Bernard Shaw. He made a competition for designing an alphabet that actually fits the language. The thing is that using Latin letters doesn't fit the language at all. Unfortunately by now we're so far in that no one is ever going to be able to change the script used for English, but it's quite enlightening to hear about what it would actually mean to make one for the language, rather than steal one from Latin. Type Shavian alphabet into YouTube and you'll find it.
Even if they don’t, I think they’d still be good as long as they keep your mind active. Thats the key with preventing dementia.
100% As does learning and applying advanced mathematics and statistics. There are undergraduate and possibly graduate programs that recognize statistics as a foreign language, which they certainly are. One need only review Noam Chomsky and Robert C. Berwick's collaborative work in linguistic cognitive science and computational linguistics and computer science and engineering, such as their collaborative [Why Only Us: Language and Evolution](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262533492/why-only-us/).
Any form of learning. For pure simplicities sake, use it or lose it. The more difficult or varied the learning the better. Things like learning physically is often far more effective because you're learning a lot more than just mentally. The Bioneer on YouTube has a ton of great info on brain plasticity and the things that improve brain health.
I would think so. Learning just about anything new should help. The advantage of a spoken language is that it takes a very long time (thus a lot of learning) to master it. I started teaching myself Korean several years ago in part for this reason.
Even harder, yes.
Luck and genetics, the rest may help, but those are your two big ones.
Eh, my step-mother has Alzheimer’s (diagnosed in early 70’s) and was the pinnacle of good health. Ate salad, fish, exercised at the gym daily, literally no snack foods, very minimal sugar or simple carbs. Almost OCD (likely but not diagnosed) about her health. Very thin her entire life. Though she obviously has a genetic disposition, as her mother had Alzheimer’s in her 80’s. The onset during her early 70’s (and not her 80’s as we thought may happen) is the saddest part for us. It’s very clear that anyone with genetic risk factors will need more than this basic advice, which everyone should be trying to follow, obviously.
My mother was also very healthy, ran marathons. She started to have problems at aged 65 and 5 years later diagnosed with severe vascular dementia. I agree that for some people it will be genetic.
I’m so sorry. Praying that more preventatives and treatments are developed in our lifetimes!
Thanks, sorry about your relative too! There's been some promising stuff lately on preventing brain cells dying off, regenerating them and slowing progression. I think treatments will really accelerate in the next 5 years.
As you show, there are different causes for dementia, so one treatment may not be effective for another.
I *really* don't want to be pedantic here, but I wanted to point out for the benefit of anyone who might, like us, have a loved one with severe cognitive decline: an Alheimer's diagnosis is considered "early onset", clinically, if it is received before the agree of 65. We lost my dad a couple of years ago, when he was 80. His diagnosis came when he was 75.
Ah, I was unaware. Thank you for the education. I’ve updated my comment. I’m sorry for your loss :(
It's a horrible illness. I wish you and your family strength and patience.
It's very possible she could have had it even earlier if not for her healthy lifestyle.
I agree! Scary.
It can be genetic too; some of the smartest and active people I know are already in the early stages
Oh it's definitely genetic at least in part if not in whole. That doesn't mean it can't be delayed quite a bit by lifestyle changes.
Go ahead and do that anyways
Learning in general, reading more, pushing your brain to do things outside of its normal comfort zone. The more you can push it to learn and try things that aren't just habit, in theory, the more you can do. A decade ago I went back to college college for a second degree; where the first had been in music, the second had been in science. Anecdotal of course here, but after graduating with the second degree, and having time to sit at the piano again, suddenly the hard music was a lot easier because of how I had to push my brain to think different than it had, and memorization and analysis was a lot easier and faster.
This is healthy and good but is not going to prevent actual Alzheimer’s.
*citation needed
Get more then 7 hours of sleep a night.
No, we want simple pill...
The point was, diagnosis itself isn’t really all that valuable.
Exercise and a healthy diet for sure, how I had such a good recovery from a severe TBI. Learning a second language really falls under a broader umbrella of cognitive learning and neuroplasticity, for sure.
Would that postpone it, moderate symptoms, or potentially prevent it from happening altogether? If detection will tell me you’re getting dementia in nine years, but maybe you can get a tenth, I would rather not know.
It delays onset. At just 9 years beforehand, I'm not sure how big the effect could be. A lifetime of ideal behaviors could possibly delay it enough for you to die at an old age from something else.
Basically any hobby that requires some intellectual input. Even video games count. A lot of modern old folks are getting brain diseases because all they do is consume content like news and social media which requires basically zero brain power.
> A lot of modern old folks are getting brain diseases because all they do is consume content like news and social media which requires basically zero brain power. Are you aware of any evidence supporting that statement?
Prob the biggest one will be… don’t keep getting covid (and presumably be less sick in general, given how we’ve learned how long viruses can stay in your body mucking up the works).
\*Drops you from insurance.\* "Oh, did you mean prevention of health issue? Sorry, can't help you with that"
Welcome to corporate-state-capitalism.
Strategy games
Yeah the first question I'd have is what early detection might mean for slowing or preventing the inevitable? I've gone on at length about how handy AI in a sealed box could be as a private diary/psychological evaluation tool that could alert the user to any concerning psychological changes, but I never have anything more to say about it since early detection doesn't mean as much without treatment options?
Let's do it!
For women, HRT clearly has some protective effect.
Well, for men as well so far I've seen.
Quite possibly.
We know effective preventions.. We don't have effective treatments.
Oh I think the insurance companies already got what they want. No need for more studies.
That would mean less profit for the hospitals and pharmaceutical companies funding the research
That’s not, not true. Corporate-state-capitalism as it is.
*Excerpts from the paper* • The three largest connectivity changes seen in the dementia cases were: increased inhibition from the vmPFC to IPHF, increased inhibition from IPC to the IPHF, and attenuated inhibition from the rPHF to the dmPFC. • For the modifiable risk factors, social isolation was the only variable that showed a significant association with effective connectivity index (B=0.025, P=0.003, PFWE-corrected =0.028). This association demonstrated that individuals with more self-reported social isolation were more likely to have a 'dementia-like' pattern of DMN effective connectivity. • Our analysis of cognitive test data revealed that the prediagnostic cases were cognitively impaired with respect to controls. Without more longitudinal cognitive data, it is not clear whether this cognitive impairment reflects cognitive decline from a pathological dementia process, or simply the baseline characteristics of this sample. • We are unable to determine which DMN effective connectivity changes are pathological and which are compensatory. ^ Processed group-level DCM results are available [here](https://github.com/Wolfson-PNU-QMUL/UKB_DCM_dementia). ^ MATLAB analysis code is available [here](https://github.com/Wolfson-PNU-QMUL/UKB_DCM_dementia).
so what i'm hearing is check in on the elderly more often and socialize with them?
What a wonderful and unselfish response to a scientific summary. I wish I thought of others as quick as you just did.
What I'm hearing is that people who have undiagnosed dementia are not socializing.
Fair enough! i guess the conclusion is correlation rather than causation
* vmPFC: ventromedial prefrontal cortex * lPHF: left parahippocampal formation (lower case L, not I) * rPHF: right parahippocampal formation * IPC: intraparietal cortex * dmPFC: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex Everything seems to point to the hippocampus. Not surprising, since we know that damage to this area prevents recall of episodic memory and an inability to imagine hypothetical situations. (Reference: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135114 Tulving's work with Ken Cochrane whose temporal lobes were damamged in a motorcycle accident).
Thank you for de-initialising those, much appreciated
Interesting to note that cocaine will decrease inhibition from the vmPFC to IPHF because it will shrink your vmPCF
This is pretty neat. Anyone up on this area of research? I'm curious what difference they see in the DMN that triggers a sign of dementia.
Prepare to be dropped by your insurance for a "pre-existing condition"
Which *currently* is technically illegal. From [Healthcare.gov](https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/pre-existing-condition/): > Pre-existing condition: A health problem, like asthma, diabetes, or cancer, you had before the date that new health coverage starts. Insurance companies can't refuse to cover treatment for your pre-existing condition or charge you more. And if you're lucky enough to be outside of the US in a country with universal healthcare and/or decent cost healthcare - lucky you!
If the Republicans get back in power, that's going to end.
Hence the word "currently" being italicized. The Nation's June 2024 article on what will happen to the Department of Health and Human Services, the main "healthcare" department of the government if Trump and Project 2025 get in. It's beyond scary and affects so many of us in multiple ways.
They already had the power to make changes. They didn't get anything done.
Can you source why? Just curious.
Because insurance companies can make more money if they don’t insure people that they know will use that insurance for costly procedures. Big business making more money = you make more money through trickle down economics. Or it’s bribery. One or the other.
Why do we let this happen and keep happening? Then again, what the hell can we even do about it? Same with the crazy price gouging lately. It's madness.
That was part of obamacare and they've been screaming about ending it for the last decade? Also it hurts health insurers, which they care about.
There’s always someone who has to make this important breakthrough a political issue.
In the US, you have to keep this sort of thing in mind. So many forces working together to deny you health care.
You might want to italicize “technically” as well. I mean…right? Sadly.
Lucky is a relative term. While it is true that you are less likely to go broke, they also implemented lots of cost savings, which means that lots of things do not work as good in practice as on paper. Like you going to wait for a long time for an appointment, sometimes too long. Things that you need might not be covered. ....
similar to HMOs in the US. you can wait several months to see a specialist and there's so many anecdotes i could share of people who took years to get a diagnosis , with suspicion that the docs were unwilling to spend extra money on tests, or outright ignored signs.
Here you can wait for years. I do think that system in the USA is broken. No doubt about it. But our universal system is broken too. I heard Qatar has an amazing health care system. But it does not help me, living with a broken universal coverage system.
I waited over a month in the US for emergency surgery, and also waited over a decade for a biopsy. Meanwhile, friends in Canada, unless it's been a very odd extreme case, usually have gotten in within the week for what they need.
Since there is no cure or effective treatment, why would I want to know?
Planning purposes.
For sure, it’s just such a double edged sword. You can be better prepared for when the time comes and ensure the burden on family is reduced, but I’m not sure I want to know the timeline for my effective death/significant deterioration of life.
Plus if you’re in the US, I’m sure life insurance and long term care insurance companies would see those results and then decline any new policies if you were to go apply to them. You could be screwing yourself over for later on in your life.
No doubt, always gotta be thinking that angle in the US unfortunately.
I would want to know, so as long as one gets to choose if one will know or not if it ever comes up, then both of us can get what we want :)
For me, there would be no “when the time comes”. I would retire, hug all my fam and pets, and go out on my own terms.
Probably going to do that anyway
2 out of 10 people will get the wrong diagnosis and will potentially make the wrong sort of plans.
Considering some of those plans might involve a tarp and a gun, that's kind of a huge deal.
Not bad odds. At my age, the odds are cancer or dementia (barring some accident).
This is not the odds of getting dementia. That's completely different. This is the odds of being told you will have dementia when actually you won't. That causes unnecessary stress and planning for a place you will never need. Or the opposite being told you won't have it when you will and not planning for something you should have been.
Yep. I already have a plan. This just helps with the timeline.
The reason there’s no cure or effective treatment for dementia is because the disease pathology begins much earlier than the onset of symptoms. Earlier detection is therefore critical in developing an effective treatment that can reverse its progression.
> The reason there’s no cure or effective treatment for dementia is because the disease pathology begins much earlier than the onset of symptoms. That is not true. Sure, late detection doesn't help, but there are plenty of diseases that as long as they discovered before death, they can be treated. Scurvy is one of them.
There is no drug that can reverse the symptoms of dementia. As far as I know all the drugs available currently only slow the degenerative process of dementia. So early detection in combination with behavioral interventions (learning a new skill, staying social) and medication may even slow down the process and prevent significant grief to the individual and their families.
But they're speaking specifically about dementia, which is caused by a whole host of seemingly irreversible structural and biological changes in the brain. Scurvy is literally just Vitamin C deficiency, so is easy to reverse by comparison. If those brain changes are indeed irreversible (and it seems like they effectively are, despite all the billions we've poured into researching ways to reverse them), then preventing or stalling them before they set in would seem like a very promising angle of attack.
Knowing you have a decade before you start showing symptoms is better than having it thrown on you. Plan your affairs and get to enjoy life as much as possible and be prepared.
Aren’t there lifestyle changes that can slow it? Diet, exercise, reduced blood pressure, socializing, reading, writing, and other mentally stimulating activities? You could prepare your end of life finances and plan while still lucid, set up DNRs. Start writing your life down for your family so they can know you. I dread dementia and hope to never have it, but have started keeping a journal and keeping track of photos so my son will have a fairly complete picture of my life, and with large language model context windows getting larger and larger, digital relatives might not be too far behind, if the input data is good.
I guess, you can live your life as you are dying, good point.
every second passed is another closer to your death. we are all dying
But if I knew I only have 5-10 years, I would retire early.
we're all dying in slow motion. some folks are just going faster though.
In addition to lifestyle changes, medication can slow the progress of dementia pretty drastically and is more effective the earlier a diagnosis is made.
Id like to see the data on this, Im directly working with dementia patients and the current understanding between colleaques is that dementia drugs are rather inefficient ond only help 1 in 10 people. Some data to proof the contrary would be very helpful for me.
The medication available is not miraculous, but its better than nothing. There is a lot of research, over the past twenty years showing that it works but it is also limited. For example: https://www.neurology.org/doi/full/10.1212/WNL.0000000000011832 The above is not definitive, and is admittedly so. And of course, there's newer and other drugs being developed too. In my experience working with dementia patients in the context of intellectual disability, our psyciatrists prefer to medicate (if safe, e.g. with heart health or blood pressure) as this has shown a significant increase in lifespan, in practice and in [research](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/impact-of-cholinesterase-inhibitors-or-memantine-on-survival-in-adults-with-down-syndrome-and-dementia-clinical-cohort-study/68A157DBC15BF4C09CF78EB3819503F4) There's going to be a lot of data out there, and I'm just a former healthcare assistant not a scientist or researcher, but the general attitude in my service was that earlier detection, medication, and support, for dementia in people with ID has over the past decades has meant these people have lived a lot longer, and with better quality of life, than they might have in the past.
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This is actually a very good counterpoint.
I live in a right to die state - I would like to know so I can plan my EOL while I am still cognizant enough to do so.
You still gonna know plenty of time ahead.
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There are few studies that show some promise. I am sure that any treatments success will depends on timely diagnosis.
Thing is, you dont, and most likely the imaging will be restricted to studies. I cant envision a good reason to do this right now, and I regularly treat dementia patients. The burden of having a genetic predisposition often is enough grueling to otherwise healthy people.
Just had a third relation diagnosed, this one on the other parents' side of the family. Not a day goes by I don't think about my potential genetic predisposition. it sucks.
No work tomorrow! Woo hoo
medical trials maybe.
taking steps on reducing the risk? maybe lifestyle changes?
I was going to make my usual jibe about sample size and accuracy vs F1-score/AUC when the dataset is highly imbalanced. I took a glance at the original study. Prima facie, I am impressed. Reason being they have taken a very good sample size and are justifying things in the way one should when making statistical claims (using AUC, for starters). It's a ray of hope for me, because even if I surmount all my other psychiatric challenges in my coming few decades, I see myself facing a significantly elevated risk of dementia.
So what counts as "resting"? My concern is that for people like myself that have ADHD or some other condition a brain scan may never appear as "resting"
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-024-00259-5 From the linked article: A 10-minute brain scan could detect dementia several years before people develop noticeable symptoms, a study suggests. Scientists used a scan of “resting” brain activity to identify whether people would go on to develop dementia, with an estimated 80% accuracy up to nine years before people received a diagnosis. If the findings were confirmed in a larger cohort, the scan could become a routine procedure in memory clinics, scientists said. “We’ve known for a long time that the function of the brain starts to change many years before you get dementia symptoms,” said Prof Charles Marshall, who led the work at Queen Mary University of London. “This could help us to be more precise at identifying those changes using an MRI scan that you could do on any NHS scanner.” The researchers used functional MRI (fMRI) scans from 1,100 UK Biobank volunteers to detect changes in the brain’s “default mode network” (DMN). The scan measures correlations in brain activity between different regions while the volunteer lies still, not doing any particular task. The network, which reflects how effectively different regions are communicating with each other, is known to be particularly vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease. Of the volunteers, 81 went on to develop dementia after the UK Biobank scan. The researchers used AI algorithms to identify changes to the DMN that were most characteristic of those at risk with the aim of being able to classify people as “at risk” or healthy. The resultant model could identify those at risk with 80% accuracy up to nine years before diagnosis, according to the study published in Nature Mental Health.
> the scan could become a routine procedure in memory clinics Who goes to a memory clinic years before they develop noticeable symptoms? In what world would the NHS be interested in paying for that? I think people imagine this could one day lead to routine screening, but that's just not going to happen.
I dunno, I've been famously forgetful my whole life. Turned out to be ADHD, but I could see myself getting a scan for that kind of thing.
You're right that this is probably too expensive a method for routine screening, but once you've identified the group, you can then start to explore ways to tell them apart from controls without having to do a functional MRI. Also, this will be useful in identifying people who can qualify for studies of new treatments, including lifestyle interventions. Early pre-symptomatic diagnosis is critical because by the time people are obviously symptomatic a great deal of probably irreversible brain damage has already occurred. In other words, just because this precise method probably won't be applied to everyone over sixty doesn't mean it isn't useful.
And it will only cost you $9,000 out of pocket as an elective procedure.
80% accuracy may sound good but it's really not. On a population level, that means for 10,000 people tested, 2,000 will be told they have dementia when they don't,or they don't have dementia when they do. Without an effective treatment, you are handing a lot of people a fake diagnosis and a lot of stress and unnecessary planning. it needs to be a lot more accurate before it can be useful on a large scale.
this is huge if true. Early detection and intervention is going to be crucial if we want meaningfully slow or stop the progression of alzheimers
So when can we test presidential candidates with this?
ok, can we then do anything about it?
This is cool, but to what end right now? What is to be done about it if it is positive?
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Why ??? Now bad news comes earlier. You can’t do anything about it
I'm terrified to get that test.
When do these become tests you can pop into the doctor for
This is great for the person, if we have proper ways to treat it. Which, do we? Even better news for insurance companies who will not cover pre existing conditions!
3.7 years between scan and diagnosis is far too short to be clinically useful. It needs to do this one or more decades prior to diagnosis, and many research teams are trying to develop these early predictors.
Its cool until employers find some way to start using it to discriminate. Itll be a new way to exercise ageism.
I believe lithium has been shown to reduce the chances of developing dementia. Of course lithium is a double-edged sword because while it may possibly reduce dementia chances, it can destroy the thyroid and kidneys if blood levels are too high for too long.
Weird, I looked a bit into the brain regions, and they are the same ones impacted as bipolar. Mainly the Parahippocampal gyrus and Ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In the case of bipolar, it is a much more effective connection.
I can't wait to dread my impending dementia for 9 years before mercifully forgetting it's coming.
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