Diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia often begin changing the brain long before a person shows symptoms. This makes them hard to detect in the early stages, when treatments could be most effective. But researchers in Japan may have found a way to spot these changes sooner—and with tools already common in hospitals.
A team of scientists from the University of Tsukuba has discovered a new method to detect early signs of brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia with Lewy bodies by using regular MRI scans. Their findings, published in Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, could lead to better early diagnosis and more targeted care.
One of the biggest challenges in treating Alzheimer’s and related diseases is identifying them early enough. When people begin having minor memory problems, it can be difficult to tell what’s causing them.
Is it just part of normal aging, or is it the start of something more serious like Alzheimer’s or Lewy body dementia? These diseases can look similar at first but affect the brain in different ways and may require different treatments.
Professor Tetsuaki Arai, the senior author of the study, explained that current methods for spotting these diseases often rely on expensive or less accessible brain scans, which aren’t always available. “We wanted to find a way to detect early brain changes using standard MRI scans,” said Arai.
To do this, the research team studied how different parts of the brain communicate with each other. Rather than just looking at brain structure—like the amount of gray matter—they focused on the brain’s internal network: how various regions are linked and interact.
Professor Miho Ota, the lead author of the study, shared their surprising discovery. People with early Alzheimer’s and people with early Lewy body dementia showed unusual patterns in how their brain regions were connected.
What made this even more promising is that these network changes appeared before any major loss of gray matter—the usual marker doctors look for when diagnosing brain diseases.
In Alzheimer’s patients, the scientists saw unusual network patterns in one part of the brain, while in Lewy body dementia patients, the patterns were found in different regions. Healthy individuals didn’t show these changes at all.
This means that simply by using common MRI machines—already found in hospitals around the world—doctors may be able to pick up early warning signs of specific brain diseases. Even better, they might be able to tell Alzheimer’s apart from other forms of dementia, which has always been a challenge in the early stages.
Professor Arai hopes that this approach can lead to earlier and more accurate diagnoses. “These network changes could give us clues about which disease a person has, even before traditional signs show up,” he said.
This new technique could be an important step forward in how we understand and treat Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia. By catching the diseases earlier, doctors may be able to slow their progress and improve the quality of life for millions of people around the world.
If you care about brain health, please read studies about how the Mediterranean diet could protect your brain health, and Omega-3 fats and carotenoid supplements could improve memory.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about antioxidants that could help reduce dementia risk, and higher magnesium intake could help benefit brain health.
Copyright © 2025 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
