Philip Leverhulme success for University of Birmingham academics

A delayed neurological response to processing the written word could be an indicator that a patient with mild memory problems is at an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, research led by the University of Birmingham has discovered. Using an electroencephalogram (EEG) - a test that detects electrical activity in a person's brain via electrodes attached to their scalp - researchers studied the brain activity of a group of 25 patients to establish how quickly they processed words shown to them on a computer screen. The study, published in Neuroimage Clinical, was led by the University of Birmingham's School of Psychology and Centre for Human Brain Health and was carried out in collaboration with the Universities of Kent and California. The patients who took part were a mix of healthy elderly people, patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and patients with MCI who had developed Alzheimer's within three years of diagnosis of MCI. MCI, a condition in which someone has minor problems with mental abilities such as memory beyond what would normally be expected for a healthy person of their age, is estimated to be suffered by up to 20 per cent of people aged over 65. It is not a type of dementia, but a person with MCI is more likely to go on to develop dementia. Dr Ali Mazaheri , of the University of Birmingham, said: "A prominent feature of Alzheimer's is a progressive decline in language, however, the ability to process language in the period between the appearance of initial symptoms of Alzheimer's to its full development has scarcely previously been investigated.