alzheimers news-can a video game diagnose it

ALZHEIMERS NEWS-CAN A VIDEO GAME DIAGNOSE IT

with early alzheimers or mild cognitive impairment a person will have problems with short term memory since the short term memory part of the brain the hippocampus gets affected first

another problem that folks have early on in the disease is spatial visual problems where they have trouble gauging distances and problems with determining colors and contrast and problems reading and problems with driving

these are the things i am acutely awar of and  i look for every day in my life knowing when they show up that things are starting to speed up some in my brain

some folks think that this spatial vision problems are really the first symptoms that occur
even before short term memory loss

i am careful for this reason when i drive knowing that this can all sneak up on you i mean me

then
the late onset alzheimers disease gene is called the apoe 4 gene
if you get two copies you are more likely to get alzheimers disease
if you get one copy of the gene then you are still at an increased risk for alzheimers disease just not as much as the apoe 4/apoe 4 folks

prealzheimers is where a person has beta amyloid and tau in the brain but its too early for it to show up on memory tests
it can be detected by spinal fluid analysis of the amyloid and tau in the spinal fluid
and
by doing an amyvid pet scan for the amyloid which would be positive

so looking at spatial vision and apoe 4 gene
they designed a video game to detect the early symptoms of spatial vision issues
they also noticed they could detect these in folks who carry the apoe 4 but have no memory loss symptoms

here is my simple description of the video game
you look at a map then the map is taken away then you drive your boat  from buoy to buoy across the sea to win the game

in this study they found that folks who played the game if they had the apoe 4 gene even if they didnt have any memory issues had problems with spatial vision

in fact
they could predict who was going to get mild cognitive impairment even though they didnt have symptoms and they found it was more likely to occur in those who had the apoe 4 gene

if you find this intriguing which i did
i suggest you read these two articles on the study

game app sea hero quest spots early symptoms of alzheimers disease

video game designed to detect alzheimers disease seems to be working

maybe this could be the new test to find those who are prealzheimers without doing memory tests or blood tests or scans or spinal taps

who would have thunk it huh
8+ years ago i could have just played the sea hero quest video game and got my diagnosis without all those blood tests and memory tests and spinal taps and mris and amyvid pet scans and genetic tests

could it be that simple

what a good screening test this could be though

the organicgreen doctor