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Early signs of Alzheimer's may be evident in 'slow semantics processing'
January 02, 2013
Semantics processing ability may indicate cognitive health and the risk of Alzheimer's
Early signs of Alzheimer's may be reflected in an individual's ability to process semantic or knowledge-based information.
That is according to new research published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, which examined the information processing ability of Alzheimer's patients, those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and healthy individuals.
Researchers decided to question whether a key or ant was bigger and explained that this would provoke a slower response than when the size difference was greater, such as between a key and a house.
In visual representations of an ant and a house, both MCI and Alzheimer's participants had no difficulty in giving the correct answers.
However, their response time was greatly reduced when the ant was shown on a larger picture than the house, which confused the candidates.
Dr David Salmon said: "Because the task places minimal demands on the effortful retrieval process, overt word retrieval, or language production, it also suggests that this deficit reflects an early and gradual loss of integrity of semantic knowledge."
Understanding Alzheimer's is paramount for treatments to combat the disease, which the Alzheimer's Society estimates affects around 650,000 people in England.
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