Study Highlights Early Signs of Alzheimer's Disease - Video

People with Alzheimer's exhibit a loss of motor control along with cognitive decline. One of the earliest signs of this decay can be spotted in involuntary eye movements known as saccades. Researchers from École de Technologie Supérieure and Dartmouth University investigated the use of earpiece microphones to spot early signs of Alzheimer's. They presented their work at the virtual 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

These quick twitches of the eyes in Alzheimer's patients are often slower, less accurate, or delayed compared to those in healthy individuals. Detecting and analyzing saccades directly requires a patient to be monitored by eye-tracking equipment, which is not easily accessible for most people.

Boutros and her colleagues are exploring an alternative method using a more ubiquitous and less intrusive technology: earpiece microphones.

"We are using a device called a hearable," said Boutros. "It is an earpiece with in-ear microphones that captures physiological signals from the body. Our goal is to develop health-monitoring algorithms for hearables, capable of continuous, long-term monitoring and early disease detection."

Eye movements, including saccades, cause eardrum vibrations that can be picked up by sensitive microphones located within the ear. The researchers are conducting experiments with volunteers, giving them both hearables and conventional eye trackers.

Their goal is to identify signals corresponding to saccades, and to differentiate between healthy signals and others that are indicative of neurological disorders like Alzheimer's.

Reference: https://acoustics.org/listening-for-early-signs-of-alzheimers-disease-asa187/