Scientists have discovered the sudden use of virtual reality headsets: they can help detect people who then have the ability to develop Alzheimer's disease.

The device, extensively used by computer players, reflect the image, which has all chances to be applied for testing the navigational abilities of the people who are supposed to be exposed to the risk of dementia. Those who are worse in research, will be that who, most likely, succumb to Alzheimer's later in life, scientists say.

Identifying likely patients much before it is likely in real time, scientists suggest, in fact, that in the long-term possibility will be easier to create ways of healing, aimed at stopping or slowing down their condition.

"As a rule of thumb, memory is considered to be the first symptom of Alzheimer's," said plan chief Dennis Chen, a neuroscientist at the Cambridge Institute. "But problems with navigation are increasingly agreeing on one of the earliest signs. This has the ability to precede the release of other signs.

"By identifying those who are beginning to lose their own navigational abilities, we trust to demonstrate that we can actually target people at a much earlier stage of the disease and at times a great day to freeze much more effective in their treatment.”

The invention, in fact that the loss of navigational abilities was associated with Alzheimer's disease, was created a number of years back by Chan and his colleagues from several centers in England. In these research works tablet computers were used to test navigation tasks.

But now scientists intend to exclude their own research to a fresh degree with the introduction of virtual reality sets, in which carriers are immersed in simulated environments through which they are obliged to move.

For the role in the study will be involved in the range of 300 people aged 40 to 60 years. Some of them will be to possess a gene that becomes their at risk status or will occur from the family with the situation of the disease of Alzheimer's. However, not everyone is destined to get injured from this disease. Jang's plan is focused on finding out who will become.

Wearing headphones virtual reality, participants will be asked to lay a personal road to, and after that remember the details of a series of all kinds of environments.

” We'll note those who have specific difficulties and see if they have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's, " Chan explained. "The task of studying is quite ordinary: can we identify the configurations in the function of the brain before such as people understand, in fact, that they have them?”

Not so long ago, scientists mapped out the meaning of a tiny area of the brain, known as the entorinal cortex, which functions as the midpoint in a vast, ubiquitous brain network that keeps navigation under control. Now it is the 1st lobe of the brain, which can be of the disease of Alzheimer's.

"The entorchinal cortex is the 1st region of the brain that demonstrates degeneration in Alzheimer's disease, and this is where we will focus our research,” said Chan, whose work is funded by the Alzheimer's society.

The task of the work is to help people in the development of the disease. "On this day, testing of medicines for Alzheimer's disease were used when people have already had dementia, by this time an important brain damage has already happened," said Chan to the observer.

"If we can create drugs and turn them on before, for example, before the disease spreads beyond the enteric cortex, it will have the potential to prevent the onset of dementia.”