Study To Diagnose Dementia As Patient Sleeps Gets Research Grant

Corundum Neuroscience, an Israeli venture fund that invests in innovative neuroscience research, has announced that its first research grant was awarded to a Tel Aviv University (TAU) project to improve diagnosis of early-stage dementia and other neurological disorders while the patient is asleep.  

The study, which is led by Prof. Yuval Nir of TAU Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, uses AI for a non-invasive way to detect a certain form of abnormal brain activity associated with dementia and other disorders such as epilepsy. 

This form of brain activity, called paroxysmal discharges (PD), frequently takes place deep inside the brain, making it hard to detect and measure without invasive procedures. 

Nir and his team, however, have developed a way of using machine learning to identify subtle signals observed in the brain when PD is taking place and are now using it to analyze sleep data collected from elderly people with cognitive impairment and dementia. 

The objective of the study is to create disease-specific biomarkers for a range of neurodegenerative conditions. 

“There is currently no objective tool available with the necessary sensitivity to non-invasively detect and quantify the brain activity signatures we are investigating,” said Nir. 

“Our aim is to combine research on brain activity during sleep with machine learning, laying the groundwork for the measurement of abnormal brain states in dementia during sleep and, ultimately, to validate biomarkers for a wide range of neurological disorders.”