Research

When people feel that their memory or other mental abilities are declining, but objective tests do not reveal any deterioration, this is referred to in medicine as subjective cognitive impairment, or SCD for short. The phenomenon has been a topic of research for several years. “The affected individuals report cognitive problems that cause them serious [...]

Neurodegenerative diseases damage and destroy neurons, ravaging both mental and physical health, and Parkinson’s disease, which affects over 10 million people worldwide, is no exception. The most obvious symptoms of Parkinson’s disease arise after the illness damages a specific class of neuron located in the midbrain. The effect is to rob the brain of dopamine - [...]

Millions of older people with poor vision are at risk of being misdiagnosed with mild cognitive impairments, according to a new study by the University of South Australia. Cognitive tests that rely on vision-dependent tasks could be skewing results in up to a quarter of people aged over 50 who have undiagnosed visual problems such [...]

Scientists have discovered a single master gene that programmes ear hair cells into either outer or inner ones, overcoming a major hurdle that had prevented the development of these cells to restore hearing, according to new research published in Nature. “Our finding gives us the first clear cell switch to make one type versus the [...]

Researchers have found that a suite of complementary tests can quantify changes in dogs suspected of suffering from cognitive decline. The approach could not only aid owners in managing their elderly canine’s care, but could also serve as a model for evaluating cognitive decline progression in – and treatments for – humans with Alzheimer’s disease. [...]

It’s often said that a little stress can be good for you. Now scientists have shown that the same may be true for cells, uncovering a mechanism that might help prevent the build-up of tangles of proteins commonly seen in dementia. A characteristic of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s – collectively known as neurodegenerative [...]

Cognitive impairment as a result of severe COVID-19 is similar to that sustained between 50 and 70 years of age and is the equivalent to losing 10 IQ points, say a team of scientists from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London. The findings, published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, emerge from the NIHR COVID-19 [...]

A study has found a promising new treatment for patients with the second-most common form of dementia in people under 60, resulting in a stabilising of escalating behavioural issues, and a reversal of brain shrinkage due to the disease. It is the second clinical trial to show that the drug, sodium selenate, may be slowing [...]

Parkinson's disease is perhaps best known for its movement-related symptoms, particularly tremors and stiffness. But the disease is also known to hinder vocal production, giving those with Parkinson's a soft monotonous voice. Those symptoms, research has suggested, often appear much earlier in the disease's development - sometimes decades before movement-related symptoms. New research by University [...]

In the search for eternal youth, faecal transplants may seem like an unlikely way to reverse the ageing process. However, scientists at the Quadram Institute and the University of East Anglia have provided evidence, from research in mice, that transplanting faecal microbiota from young into old mice can reverse hallmarks of ageing in the gut, [...]