Mind slips
December 14th 2010 07:03
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Researchers seek a way to tell routine ‘senior moments’ from early signs of dementia
If you’ve been worried about forgetting names or misplacing car keys, you’re not alone. You also are probably not losing your mind.
Tweet 7 people Tweeted thisYahoo! Buzz ShareThis What’s normal and what’s not
A memory problem is serious if it affects your daily life.
Sometimes forgetting names or not being able to recall a word.
Memory lapses that include walking into a room to retrieve something and then blanking on what that was.
Forgetting where you put the keys to your car. (Forgetting how to use the keys is not normal.)
NOT NORMAL
Forgetting how to do things you’ve done many times before, such as cooking a dessert you’ve made for years.
Repeating phrases or stories in the same conversation.
Unusual trouble making choices or handling money.
Permanently forgetting the name of a close friend or relative.
Frequently misplacing something such as a purse and putting it in inappropriate places, such as the fridge.
SOURCES: American Academy of Family Physicians, US Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Eliza Shulman
Brain study: Participants wanted
Researchers from Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General hospitals are studying how aging affects the brain. They aim to pinpoint changes that occur during normal aging, versus ones that may signal a risk for Alzheimer’s years down the road.
The researchers are also interested in the relationship between lifestyle activities and healthy brain aging, so study participants will be given pedometers to see how much they are walking in one week, and also be asked questions about their leisure activities now and 20 years ago.
The researchers are seeking participants, ages 65 to 90, from Greater Boston who are generally healthy, but who have not had a previous stroke and do not have metal in their bodies, such as a pacemaker.
The five-year Harvard Aging Brain Study will include yearly brain scans and memory tests. Participants from all walks of life are sought. Contact study coordinator Lauren Wadsworth, 617-643-0143, or go to Really Long Link
Family doctors say their baby boomer patients often worry that such forgetfulness portends a dementia-filled future.
The collective angst has proven fertile territory for hawkers of supplements and other products that, manufacturers promise, will clear the fog from aging brains. From 1999 through 2009, US sales of herbs and supplements marketed for mental acuity grew 49 percent, to $458 million last year, according to Nutrition Business Journal.
It should be so simple. Some of the country’s top brain researchers say they have yet to find mind preservation in a pill. They also don’t have a rigorous way to tell when a lapse is just part of normal brain aging, versus a signal of serious trouble ahead. Boston researchers are embarking on a new study that they hope will help distinguish between the two. That information may, one day, guide patients and caregivers in choosing the right treatments, when they become available.
Scientists at Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General hospitals will be tracking 300 adults, age 65 and older, for five years, and asking them to do a few tasks that tend to trigger so-called senior moments.
“We’ll show older folks pictures of faces they don’t know, paired with fictional first names, and ask them to explicitly remember which name goes with which face,’’ said the study’s principal investigator, Dr. Reisa Sperling, a Harvard Medical School associate professor of neurology and a physician at the Brigham.
Thirty minutes later, the participants will be asked to recall the information, while scientists scan their brains to see which areas light up. That will show them the brain activity that’s associated with successfully remembered information versus the names and faces that have been forgotten. By repeating the exercise over five years, the researchers hope to see how brain activity might change over time.
“We are trying to determine which parts of the brain are preserved (during aging) and which ones give you senior moments,’’ said Sperling who, at 51, admits to a few of those moments herself.
The scientists are focusing on men and women older than 65 because it will give them the best chance of predicting, over the five years, which ones are on track for healthy aging as opposed to a trajectory for Alzheimer’s disease. The risk for Alzheimer’s increases sharply after age 65. They’re hoping to attract participants from all walks of life because too often brain studies are filled with high-powered types, potentially giving researchers a skewed view of the average mind, Sperling said.
The fear of forgetting cuts across all paths.
Harvard Vanguard family physician Eliza Shulman said that every week, at least one patient walks into her Braintree office, usually in his or her 50s or early 60s and generally healthy, but worried because their memory seems to be slipping.
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