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    • Smartphone-Based Solutions for Prospective Memory in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementia
    • Digital Biomarker and Analytics for Cognitive Impairment with Mobile and Wearable Sensing
    • Bringing the Assessment of Everyday Activities into the 21st Century
    • Technological Reserve: Understanding Technology Use as a Skill that Reduces the Risk of Cognitive Impairment
    • Closed-Loop Brain Stimulation as a Potential Intervention for Cognitive Decline
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      • Cognitive Screening Made Easy for Primary Care Providers
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TechANS Lab

 

Digital Biomarker and Analytics for Cognitive Impairment with Mobile and Wearable Sensing

Project Summary

Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) is a growing epidemic, and in the absence of effective treatment, disease burden increases as the population ages. In both ADRD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), there is significant temporal variability in disease progression, increasing the difficulty for managing patient comfort and safety. Early detection of symptomatic states and continuous monitoring are regarded as effective measures to minimize the impact of the disease as various forms of intervention can provide opportunities for treatment, compensation and coping. However, current clinic-based cognitive and behavioral assessments have numerous shortcomings; they are largely non-quantitative and clinicians often have difficulty determining if there has been significant changes in neurologic condition between visits. Additionally, assessments are obtained infrequently, and do not objectively account for disease-related behaviors that could be revealed in daily activities. In this project, we propose to advance new computational approaches and analytics to identify digital biomarkers for ADRD detection, prediction and monitoring outside the clinic. This technology-driven approach is based on sensor data passively acquired from commodity smartphones and wearables, and provides the foundation for a novel embedded assessment of cognitive status through continuous monitoring.

This proposal presents several research opportunities. Firstly, we will advance passive and continuous data collection methods using multimodal sensing. Challenges we will address include optimizing battery use for long-term data capture, and mitigating privacy concerns by performing on-device data and feature pre-processing. Secondly, we will be building on state-of-the-art research techniques in behavior and context recognition, speech analysis, and machine learning to identify digital biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. We will leverage these biomarkers to build computational models for disease stage characterization and prediction, and individualize them by incorporating race and ethnicity risk factors as priors. Lastly, to facilitate the use of these models and digital biomarkers in clinical practice, we will advance a novel visual analytics interface towards helping physicians and health practitioners interact with the acquired sensor data, validate the digital biomarkers, verify model results, and forecast the progression of disease.

Relevance

A clear and specific clinical need motivates this proposal: improved and continuous understanding, monitoring, characterization, assessment and prediction of a prevalent neuro-cognitive condition in naturalistic settings. ADRDs are difficult and costly diseases to treat, affecting millions of people in the U.S alone. Our approach provides the foundation for a new direction in the early detection and prediction of this devastating and highly-debilitating condition.

Jared Benge from The TechANS lab participate in this 4-year R01 grant award from the National Institute of Health (NIH) project of Edison Thomaz of Texas ECE and fellow researchers from The University of Texas at Austin.

Ongoing Clinical Study & Project Website

 

NIH funded project

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Latest TechANS Lab News

  • How Older People Are Reaping Brain Benefits From New Tech
  • Helpful or Harmful? New Study Looks at the Impact of Technology Use on Cognition
  • UT study: Technology such as computer, cell phones could be good for older adults
  • Study links technology use to lower risk of cognitive decline
  • Here’s the truth about your ‘digital dementia’ risk

Latest Publications

Invested Partner Feedback on Technology Assistance in Dementia (Tech-AiD). J Appl Gerontol.

Do We All Do the Same Things? Applicability of Daily Activities at the Intersection of Demographics. Neuropsychology.

The Technology in Caring Questionnaire: Development and Psychometric Properties. Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord.

Technology Use in Activities of Daily Living Amongst Older Adults Referred for Memory Clinic Evaluations. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society

Validity of the Tele-administered Montreal Cognitive Assessment for Identifying Geriatric Neurocognitive Disorders. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

Hypnosis Intervention for Sleep Disturbances in Individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Randomized Pilot Study. Int J Clin Exp Hypn.

For a complete list of publications go to our Publications page!

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