[TrackDay]

Early Signs of Dementia Can Be Detected by Tracking Driving Behaviors

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A fascinating new study from a team of US researchers has used machine learning techniques to develop algorithms that can analyze naturalistic driving data and detect mild cognitive impairment and dementia in a driver. The work is still in the preliminary stages, however, the researchers claim it could be possible in the future to detect early signs of dementia using either a smartphone app or devices incorporated into car software systems.

The influence of dementia on driving behavior is a reasonably well-studied topic. It is certainly unsurprising to observe driving behaviors change as neurodegeneration leads to cognitive decline. However, this new research set out to explore whether machine learning techniques could be used to identify patterns in driving data that can then detect either mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia.

The research utilized data from a novel long-term study called LongROAD (The Longitudinal Research on Aging Drivers), which tracked nearly 3,000 older drivers for up to four years, offering a large longitudinal dataset.

Over the course of the LongROAD study, 33 subjects were diagnosed with MCI and 31 with dementia. A series of machine learning models were trained on the LongROAD data, tasked with detecting MCI and dementia from driving behaviors.

“Based on variables derived from the naturalistic driving data and basic demographic characteristics, such as age, sex, race/ethnicity and education level, we could predict mild cognitive impairment and dementia with 88 percent accuracy,” says Sharon Di, lead author on the new study.

Although age was the number one factor for detecting MCI or dementia, a number of driving variables closely followed. These include, “the percentage of trips traveled within 15 miles (24 km) of home … the length of trips starting and ending at home, minutes per trip, and number of hard braking events with deceleration rates ≥ 0.35 g.” Using driving variables alone, the models could still predict those MCI or dementia drivers with 66 percent accuracy.

It’s still early days for the work, with the researchers saying more investigation is needed to specifically understand the differences in driving characteristics between MCI and dementia. Plus, the study is clear in noting the modest number of MCI and dementia cases in the LongROAD data means larger investigations will be necessary to find out how broadly generalizable the prediction models are in real-world settings.

Nevertheless, the study does point to intriguing future scenarios where a smartphone app, or software inside a car, can constantly monitor your driving patterns to offer clues for early detection of cognitive decline before clinical symptoms become apparent. Of course, this all assumes we will still be actively driving our cars in the future.

“Our study indicates that naturalistic driving behaviors can be used as comprehensive and reliable markers for mild cognitive impairment and dementia,” adds senior author Guohua Li. “If validated, the algorithms developed in this study could provide a novel, unobtrusive screening tool for early detection and management of mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older drivers.”

The new study was published in the journal Geriatrics.

Article Source : https://newatlas.com/health-wellbein...hine-learning/

One can check out the study & it's analysis at this link : https://www.mdpi.com/2308-3417/6/2/45/htm

[Jeroen]

Very interesting. I have MCI and I had to go through endless tests over a period of four days to be diagnosed as such. I will tell my neurologist he should let me drive any of my cars, next time. We can also dispense with these horrible lumbar punctures. Last one went wrong and I had to be flat on my back for a week and a half. To think I could have just taken a driving test.

I am a bit surprised though. As neither dementia or MCI is a problem perse for driving a car. It all depends of course on what stage you are. When you learned to drive, how much you have driven etc is likely to have an effect too.

I can pick up any book I read 10-20 years ago and just open it up and start reading from any random section or chapter and I will be fine.

But reading a new book might get problematic on page 2. It’s very weird.

I a, not sure about this research though. Obviously, I can’t quite understand it. But to me it looks they are correlating behaviours that are not necessarily related to MCI and or dementia. The length of a trip and the number of trips doesn’t
make sense at all. I don’t have the data, but my gut feeling age is bigger factor in those parameter than certain medicinal conditions.

There is actually a lot of data that shows:
A Elderly people are far less prone to have accidents
B even experience driver examiners can not determine whether somebody is suffering from dementia, let alone MCI. Unless it is really noticeable in one’s normal interactions with others (which MCI rarely is)

If I understand correctly (but I have MCI) this research doesn’t reach any firm conclusions, but merely makes suggestions for posssible correlations and further research.

It is interesting though, but I would be interested to see any conclusions on safety aspects. The paper claims it can predict dementia/MCi with ascertain precision. But both dementia and MCI can be diagnosed and measured very precisely as it is.

This is the difference betweenusing AI/ML and doing classic medical diagnostic. The former is always going to be a prediction, whereas the latter can be an actual, factual representation of what is going on in your brain.

Think like this; do you want to know there is a 80% change of having MCI or do you want to know you have MCI?

Jeroen

Jeroen

Jeroen