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High-tech Alzheimer's breakthrough hailed
YORKSHIRE scientists are helping to develop the use of breakthrough technology that could transform the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
Leeds University is working with computer giant Microsoft on the system, which replicates artificially pictures that the healthy human brain captures and stores as memories.
The images are then viewed to stimulate the patient's brain, improving their natural powers of recall.
Researchers describe the project as "potentially very exciting". Early trials have produced dramatic results, with patients experiencing up to 90 per cent of their normal memory restored after only two weeks.
A small camera is worn by the patient to record details of their life by taking a photo every 30 seconds. The camera is later plugged into a computer and thousands of pictures viewed at high-speed as a memory aid.
Regular use of the system appears to stimulate patients' memory even when not looking at pictures as a "trigger", according to researchers.
Trials have been conducted with Alzheimer's patients, the most common disease causing memory loss, and others with similarly debilitating illnesses or conditions, such as age-related dementia.
A team of researchers at Leeds University led by Professor Martin Conway and Dr Chris Moulin has received part of a 250,000 funding package from Microsoft because of their department's global reputation for work on human memory.
The device, called a SenseCam, is a small camera worn on a cord around the neck. It takes continuous pictures, which are then viewed via a computer.
The technology has been engineered so a whole day's images can be reviewed at high speed, with a day's events condensed into a few minutes' viewing time.
That helps users to remember events which would otherwise be lost from their minds, and also to re-experience the emotions attached to events and conversations.
Over time, using the equipment repeatedly appears to stimulate their memory to recall the events without the technology.
The camera's design is deliberately simple, using a fish-eye lens and sensors which detect changes in light, body heat and activity. It can store up to 30,000 images, enough to cover a fortnight's use in typical circumstances.
The Leeds team will use their expertise to try to refine the system, using data already gathered from initial trials.
Those tests included a 63-year-old woman with memory loss resulting from a brain infection, who used a SenseCam whenever she anticipated a significant event.
She spent about an hour every two days reviewing the images, for a two-week period.
Without any other memory aids she typically forgot everything within five days. But during the test her memory steadily increased, and after two weeks her recall was at around 90 per cent. She continued to remember events over time.
"It's potentially very exciting," said Dr Moulin, a neuropsychologist. "Once people in the early stages of Alzheimer's or other conditions involving memory loss realise they can't remember events, people and places they stop doing things because of the frustration of not being able to remember later.
"A great use for such a camera would be for such events – things out of the normal routine. Having the camera could mean that they can revisit not only the facts of such events, but the essential feelings that are so much part of memory."
Prof Conway added: "SenseCam images are one of the most potent cues to remembering I have ever encountered."
Microsoft says wider research and development are needed before the company can make any decision to commercialise the camera.
Background: Camera's pictures of a forgotten life
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