New Dementia Study Reveals Why Brain Scan is a Must

New research has discovered that signs of dementia can be spotted up to nine years before the symptoms of the disease begin to manifest. “We have always suspected this might be the case … [In people with genetic types of dementia] you can pick up subtle signs on brain scans years before a formal diagnosis,” says Timothy Rittman, a neurologist who led the research at Cambridge University, in the United Kingdom. Rittman says he and his team were instead interested to see how early they could pick up these changes in people without a genetic risk of developing the condition.