The standard statistical caution for these kinds of screening tests is especially important here, because while Alzheimers drugs may be more effective earlier in the disease course, none of them are "effective" in the sense of meaningfully staving the disease off; the upside to early detection is not very strong.

Meanwhile: the big challenge for screening tests is base rate confounding: the test needs to be drastically more specific the lower the percentage of the cohort that truly has the condition is. Relatively low rates of false positives can pile up quickly against true positives for conditions that are rare in the population.

The bad thing here is: you get a test suggestive of early-onset Alzheimers. It could realistically be the case that the test positive indicates in reality a coin-flip chance you have it. But that doesn't matter, because it will take years for the diagnosis to settle, and your mental health is materially injured in the meantime.

Exercise significant skepticism with neuroscience. People are credulous — and many studies are honestly shams. Like that “MIT study shows that ChatGPT reduces brain activity.”

Why is this pilot study in the Smithsonian?

There is a growing body of research showing that increasing slow-wave activity during sleep can improve outcomes, including sleep quality[1], memory, and correlations with amyloid response[2].

Sadly, our latest grant application did not receive funding, but we are supporting other clinical researchers with our technology. Our technology is based on more than a decade of research with 50+ published, peer reviewed studies.

We focus on sleep directly rather than the disease, which means people do not have to wait years for regulatory approvals before they can feel day-to-day benefits.

For those curious about learning more, our approach and links to additional research are on our website https://affectablesleep.com .

Mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s changes in sleep https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2024.07.002

Slow-wave activity, memory, and amyloid response https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afad228

I am not understanding this: "It can’t directly predict who will develop Alzheimer’s, but it does identify who could be at a higher risk." I get the part that it can't "directly predict", but what does it mean to "identify who could be at a higher risk"? How was "higher risk" independently diagnosed in the study in order to show a correlation between higher risk according to this test, and higher risk according to some other test?