Developing a New EEG Method for the Early Diagnosis of Dementia. Using Novel EEG Analyses to Create a Diagnostic Test and Biomarker for Use With People With Dementia

Participant recruitment

15 people with early AD will be recruited from the Sheffield Teaching Hospital and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Trusts memory clinics. The STH clinic is neurology led and sees working age (<65 years old) patients while the SHSC clinic sees an older (>65 years old) population. Over 1300 new assessments are conducted every year. Approximately 65-70% are diagnosed with dementia.

Investigators will choose patients with typical neuropsychological profiles of AD. All patients will have previously been recruited to the Virtual Physiological Human: Dementia Research enabled by IT. VPH-DARE@IT is recruiting 30-40 participants in each of the three following groups (mild AD, MCI and normal controls) and thus our participants will be drawn from this group and all will have pre-existing high-resolution 3D structural and volumetric assessment plus resting-state fMRI scans. This resting-state fMRI data will be analysed to examine the DMN, allowing us to directly compare measures of brain-connectivity between EEG and fMRI and contrast the discriminatory ability of the two methodologies.

10 healthy controls will be aged matched and recruited either from Neurology clinics or be spouses of study participants. The investigators will endeavour to recruit normal controls who have undergone fMRI as part of the academic neuroradiology departments control population for VPH-DARE@IT and other studies.

People with AD and 10 healthy controls will have a repeat EEG to assess the reproducibility and robustness of the EEG measures.