Newswise — Melville, NY, November 19, 2024 – Alzheimer’s disease affects more than 50 million people worldwide and is often devastating to both the person living with Alzheimer’s disease and their family and loved ones. have a significant impact. The disease has no known cure and its slow-growing nature makes early diagnosis difficult.
Researchers at the Ecole de Technique Superieure and Dartmouth College are investigating the use of earphone microphones to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Miriam Boutros will present her own presentation on Tuesday, November 19th at 4:15pm ET as part of the 187th Annual Virtual Conference of the Acoustical Society of America, to be held from November 18th to 22nd, 2024. We will present our research results.
Patients with Alzheimer’s disease exhibit loss of motor control along with cognitive decline. One of the earliest signs of this weakness can be found in involuntary eye movements known as saccades. Rapid eye twitches in Alzheimer’s patients are often slower, less precise, or delayed compared to those in healthy people.
“Eye movements are fascinating because they are among the fastest and most precise movements in the human body, relying on both fine motor and cognitive abilities,” said researcher Arian Chamay. said.
Direct detection and analysis of saccades requires monitoring the patient with an eye-tracking device, which is not easily accessible to most people. Boutros and colleagues are exploring an alternative using a more ubiquitous and less intrusive technology: earphone microphones. The study is led by Rachel Bouzerhal of the Hearing Health and Assistive Devices Research (RHAD) Laboratory at the École de Technique Superieure and Chris Niemczak of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College.
“We use devices called hearables,” Boutros said. “This is an earphone with an in-ear microphone that captures physiological signals from the body. Our goal is to develop health monitoring algorithms for hearables that allow for continuous, long-term monitoring and early detection of disease. That’s what I do.”
Eye movements, including saccades, cause the eardrum to vibrate, which can be picked up by sensitive microphones in the ear. Researchers are conducting experiments that provide both hearable and traditional eye trackers with volunteers. Their goal is to identify signals that correspond to saccades and distinguish between healthy signals and other signals indicative of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
They hope their research will one day lead to devices that can continuously monitor Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological diseases non-invasively.
“While our current project focuses on long-term monitoring of Alzheimer’s disease, we hope to eventually work on other diseases as well and be able to differentiate them based on symptoms that can be tracked through in-ear signals.” said Shamey.
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Media are invited to attend a virtual press conference on this study and other sessions on Monday, November 18th. The complete schedule is available at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-conference-schedule-for-monday-nov-. 18-asa187. To register for a virtual press conference or session, please register by email (email protected).
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Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-virtual-fall-2024/
Technical program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/src/EventPilot/php/express/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL24
ASA Press Room
In the coming weeks, the ASA Press Room will be updated with newsworthy articles and a schedule of press conferences at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.
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ASA will also share dozens of general language papers on topics covered at the conference. A public language paper is a summary (300-500 words) of a presentation written by a scientist for a general audience. Comes with photos, audio, and video. For more information, please visit https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.
press registration
The ASA allows free registration to eligible professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to participate in a virtual conference or press conference, please contact AIP Media Services (email protected). Upon urgent request, AIP staff can also assist in setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, and background information.
About the Acoustical Society of America
The Acoustical Society of America is the leading international scientific association in acoustics, dedicated to the science and technology of sound. We have 7,000 members worldwide, representing a wide range of fields in acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s premier acoustics journal), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards for acoustics. The Society also holds two major academic conferences each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.
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