Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev developed a new method for rapidly diagnosing brain blood vessel pathology that may lead to neurodegenerative diseases and neurological and psychiatric conditions, the university announced Tuesday.
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The novel method is based on analyzing EEG, i.e., brain activity patterns using proprietary algorithms. The method was developed by Dr. Dan Milikovsky and Prof. Alon Friedman from Ben-Gurion University's Departments of Physiology and Cell Biology, Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
The findings show that patients with Alzheimer's disease and other brain conditions display nonconvulsive epileptic seizure-like activity that can be detected by EEG recordings.
This abnormal activity reflects pathological changes in dysfunction of the brain blood vessels, which contribute, according to recent studies, to the pathogenesis of various neurodegenerative and other neuropsychiatric disorders.
The technology was successfully tested on animals and dozens of patients and is now being validated on large databases of EEG records of thousands of patients.
"This new approach for diagnosing neurological conditions based on analysis of changes of blood vessels in the brain can be valuable for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease and other neurological conditions at the stage when treatment can still slow down disease progression," said Josh Peleg, CEO of BGN Technologies, the technology transfer company of Ben-Gurion University.
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