Brain News
Researchers at the University of Tsukuba explored how people’s drawings and sketches can be used to screen cognitive impairments. The study is published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
The Study
To show how changes in drawing traits can betray severe to mild cognitive impairments, the researchers used automatic analysis of drawing. They asked 144 aged participants to perform five drawing tests.
While the tests were being performed, the researchers investigated certain motion- and pause- -related features associated with the participants’ drawing skills. These included pen pressure and posture, drawing speed, pauses, etc.
The Findings
The results revealed that a common set of drawing traits can capture different but complementary aspects of mild cognitive impairments (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Moreover, analyzing these features may lead to a scalable way to detect cognitive conditions in people with dementia and other memory disorders.
One of the lead researchers, Professor Tetsuaki Arai, said: “Our results pave the way for better screening tests for cognitive impairments.” Indeed, early and better detection of cognitive impairments can lead to timely treatment of brain disorders and improve both treatment outcomes and patients’ quality of life.
To Know More You May Refer To
Kobayashi, M., Yamada, Y., Shinkawa, K., Nemoto, M., Nemoto, K., & Arai, T. (2022). Automated Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease by Capturing Impairments in Multiple Cognitive Domains with Multiple Drawing Tasks. Journal of Alzheimer’s disease : JAD, 10.3233/JAD-215714. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-215714