> Eight mild/moderate AD patients were treated with TEMT in-home by their caregivers for 2 months utilizing a unique head device.
Call me skeptical. Mild/moderate AD patients are basically still functional human beings (and pretty hard to diagnose with good accuracy unless you go for expensive brain imaging) that is nothing like "severe" AZ patients. The fact that they knew they were treated by such an invasive device surely has an impact on how they "felt".
Of course, they did not use brain imaging (with tau PET tracers) to diagnose such patients:
> Subjects had to be diagnosed with mild or moderate AD, according to the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke-Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association (NINCDS-ADRDA) criteria.
> Tau PET tracers have enabled in vivo quantification of PHF-tau burden in human brains. Tau PET can help in understanding the underlying cause of dementia symptoms, and in patient selection for clinical trials of anti-dementia therapies.
Add to the potential for unreliable patient selection the very limited sample size, and you could end up with results that look much better than they actually are.
I worked in dementia care for a number of years. When we would get a new admission we would do mini mental state exams to determine a sort of baseline as to where they were mentally such as seen here : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/gap/cgi-bin/GetPdf.cgi...
You would ask things like can you tell me today's date. Do you know what season July is in? I will name 3 items have them repeat them and tell them they need to remember them in a little bit. Then you ask again about those objects and see if they can recall. The test goes on and has a bunch of questions which at the end you score. So I could see them doing something similar in this situation where they test cognitive ability and then retest it a month later. These exams I think would be a pretty good baseline to mark improvement.
I'm not even thirty and I'd have to stop and think about both of those questions for at least a second.
I actually don't know exactly the official boundaries of the seasons (I suppose because they never mattered to me?) I know autumn bleeds into winter into spring, and I know December is in Summer, though where it is in the "official" demarcation of Summer I don't actually know off the top of my head.
Now I just feel like I'm mentally deficient in someway
Lol if you look at the link I provide and scroll down you can take the full test. I can assure you it is pretty straight forward to someone of sound mind. It isn't really meant to trick and some times you have to adjust it a little. Like if I hear you lived along the equator you whole life I probably would ignore the fact that you don't know the seasons well. I guess these tests are not perfect but do shed some light.
Hah, I'm sure I actually am of sound mind. I know with the seasons thing I'm weird, and like I said I could probably figure it out if I actually thought about it.
Knowing today's date though is something I pretty much can never do unless I've had a reason to be aware of the date recently (some important event either happening soon or having just happened). I actually find it a little odd that other people seem to be so aware of it.
I could tell you the day of the week though, because that has more day to day relevance
I would fail the two example questions: can you tell me today's date. No. Do you know what season July is in? No: I'm from the southern hemisphere (additionally we don't have Fall down under).
I couldn't remember my own name when I went to the emergency clinic a while back (kidney stones, very hurt, going into shock), which at least got me immediate attention (I wonder whether it would if I looked elderly?)
Call me skeptical. Mild/moderate AD patients are basically still functional human beings (and pretty hard to diagnose with good accuracy unless you go for expensive brain imaging) that is nothing like "severe" AZ patients. The fact that they knew they were treated by such an invasive device surely has an impact on how they "felt".
Of course, they did not use brain imaging (with tau PET tracers) to diagnose such patients:
> Subjects had to be diagnosed with mild or moderate AD, according to the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke-Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association (NINCDS-ADRDA) criteria.
This is the current state of imaging with tau PET tracers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6096533/
> Tau PET tracers have enabled in vivo quantification of PHF-tau burden in human brains. Tau PET can help in understanding the underlying cause of dementia symptoms, and in patient selection for clinical trials of anti-dementia therapies.
Add to the potential for unreliable patient selection the very limited sample size, and you could end up with results that look much better than they actually are.