This text is part of the special Health and well-being section
In order to better understand cognitive disorders and declines in abilities among the population, two promising research projects are taking place in Quebec universities. Overview.
This is particularly the case at Concordia University, where Professor Natalie Phillips and her team are working to detect the signs of early-onset dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. Its work targets people in their 60s and 70s who are themselves experiencing loss of cognitive capacity. “These people say, ‘I think there’s something strange going on. I’m not as efficient as I was,” summarizes the woman who also holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Sensory Cognitive Health, Aging and Dementia.
Between 2000 and 2019, the number of people aged 40 and over who were diagnosed with major neurocognitive disorders tripled, climbing from 43,130 to 126,285, according to the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ). This figure could even increase by 145% by 2050, according to a report from the Alzheimer Society of Canada published last January.
On conventional tests measuring cognitive ability, these people perform identically to healthy people. “But for some, they are in the very early stages of dementia or Alzheimer’s. And it’s clinically very difficult to detect these diseases at this stage, because the changes are very subtle,” explains M.me Phillips.
One of his students, Nick Grunden, used a unique technique to analyze the relationship between scores obtained on each exam. Thus, with this method, it is able to detect certain anomalies. “These individuals seem different from healthy people who don’t complain, halfway between them and people we know clinically to be at risk of developing dementia,” describes M.me Phillips.
An online questionnaire
At the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), Professor Dave Saint-Amour is also looking for new ways to measure the cognitive abilities of neuropsychology patients.
With his team, the man who teaches in the Department of Psychology is setting up an accessible online platform, ExecQc. Unlike mental health, which is easy to assess through an online questionnaire, this is not the case for cognitive abilities. Attentional faculties, memorization of information, response time, processing speed… “Usually, we measure these functions with a neuropsychologist or a psychologist in person. It’s more difficult to do this online,” he summarizes.
This is why he is working to develop a new digital tool to help professionals in their work. “There are very specific challenges,” explains the researcher. Thus, to evaluate, for example, the response time of a person online, we must also take into account the speed of the Internet connection, the type of computer, platform, etc. “We chose a freely accessible programming language which is very powerful and flexible. It allows us to have a good estimate of the response time by considering all the technical or logistical barriers that we may encounter with a digital tool. And this information is very valuable for neuropsychologists,” argues the researcher.
Better services
Mr. Saint-Amour plans to test his platform with professionals from the Association québécoise des neuropsychologues in order to validate the results with around a hundred people who have follow-up. “We double check that the tool works. We would not want to create false diagnoses with patients.” Ultimately, he hopes that the method will allow Quebecers easier access to professionals in teleneuropsychology. “There are very few neuropsychologists in the region. Going back and forth to Montreal every time is not very practical. So, there can be telemedicine follow-ups,” he says.
For their part, Professor Phillips and her team are now working to review the information collected and incorporate other information, such as genetic risk and brain imaging data. “Then, what we will do in the long term, we will be able to follow these at-risk patients for several years and find who will see their condition worsen or develop a form of dementia. So we can go back and reanalyze the data to build a clearer profile of people when they are at these early stages, in the hope of being able to identify them earlier,” the researcher projects.
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