Eyes: The Window to Dementia Diagnosis

Dementia is a progressive neurological condition that mainly affects people over the age of 65 and it may come with difficulties with vision. Spotting the early warning signs is key to maintaining a dignified lifestyle.

Seeing is believing. We tend to believe that what we see around us is pretty much what others with healthy eyes can see. But a person with dementia can see your half-full drink differently.

According to research, your eyes can provide a view of your brain's future. Findings have identified an association between common eye conditions and Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

Eye tests could be utilized to detect the early signs of dementia. Early diagnosis can help people get the right treatments, find the support available and also make decisions about the future.

Eye scans are used to measure the exact thickness of a layer of neurons on the retina at the back of the eye, according to a research team from London's Moorfields Eye Hospital and the University of Oxford. This layer had been measured in more than 33,000 British people aged 40-69 whilst also carrying out tests on memory, reaction time and reasoning.

Diseases and conditions of the brain can have an impact on the eyes because the optic nerve and retina are brain tissue that extends outside the braincase. A clear relationship between brain tissue and eye tissue is headed towards future areas of research.

The vision changes from dementia can cause confusion and a handful of people mistakenly think the odd behavior is a result of hallucinations. The process of seeing is complicated in a way that disturbances in vision and perception can cause behavioral challenges and even safety risks.

Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Ophthalmoscopy (FLIO) is an imaging technique that measures a protein called beta-amyloid in the retina. Beta-amyloid is one of the proteins that build up in the brain of people with Alzheimer's.

The brain's safeguards (a bony skull, a sack of tissue, and blood vessels that filter out most infectious bugs) are a huge obstacle for scientists trying to study the brain's decline -- specifically dementia. Grey matter adjusts to the slow buildup of abnormal proteins, the cause of several forms of dementia.

Reaching 75 years old, the normal changes related to aging reduce our normal peripheral vision, so we are not able to see and notice as much as we would when we were younger. Having dementia reduces their field of vision to about 12 inches, like wearing a pair of binoculars.

According to a study published in the Neurobiology of Aging, the researchers focused on pupillary responses which are driven by the locus coeruleus (LC), a cluster of neurons in the brainstem that functions in regulating arousal and also modulating cognitive function.

The LC causes the change in the diameter of the eyes' pupils during cognitive tasks -- in essence, the pupils get bigger the more difficult the brain task.

Two examples of how vision changes with dementia: one is blurring when one sees things less sharply and faces or common objects can become harder to recognize. Another is slow reactions to light which make it hard to go from a light space to a dark space.

Tags Dementia , Brain