Neuropsychologist Shares Little-Known Warning Sign of Specific Dementia Type That Appears in the Way You Walk

Sometimes, as a person grows older, their brain starts experiencing some unusual shifts. Some proteins in their brain cells form abnormal clumps. Other proteins called “tau” which give nerve cells their shape, collapse to form twisted strands or tangles. These clumps and tangles block nerve cells from receiving nutrients. As a result, the deprived brain cells die, causing damage to the hippocampus, an area responsible for making memories. Over time, the damage spills into other parts of the brain, robbing the person of basic abilities like logical thinking and emotional intelligence, often causing them to live in a state of paranoia, anxiety, and hallucinations.

Dementia isn’t a normal part of aging, but given that over 55 million people worldwide suffer from it, an early diagnosis is crucial. In a 2019 research published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, Ríona McArdle, a Post-Doctoral Researcher, at the Brain and Movement Group at Newcastle University, used “electronic footprints” to reveal that the type of dementia can reveal itself in the way a person walks. “The way you walk can change several years before developing dementia. This is because dementia is associated with brain cells dying, which can affect many things that we take for granted in everyday life, such as memory and thinking – and even walking,” McArdle wrote in The Conversation.

She described that “dementia” is an umbrella term for various subtypes of this disease, such as Alzheimer’s disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or Lewy body dementia. While most types of dementia affect the memory and thinking portions of the brain, Lewy body dementia affects movement. “Correctly identifying what type of dementia someone has is important for clinicians and researchers as it allows patients to be given the most appropriate treatment for their needs as soon as possible,” she said in a university press release. To conduct this research, the team of researchers led by McArdle analyzed the walking styles of 110 people, including 29 older adults whose cognition was intact, 36 with Alzheimer’s disease, and 45 with Lewy body dementia.

The participants took part in a walking session at the Gait Lab of the Clinical Ageing Research Unit, an NIHR-funded research initiative jointly run by Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle University. Participants were asked to walk across a mat with thousands of sensors inside it which created an electronic footprint. With their electronic footprints, McArdle was able to determine “how fast or slow they walked, how short or long their steps were, how long it took to make a step, how much their step times and step lengths changed as they walked, how different their left and right steps look, and finally, how wide or narrow their steps are.”

The team concluded that the walking patterns of people with memory loss dementia differed from those of people with Lewy body dementia. Also, they noticed that people with dementia have significant walking problems. Moreover, people with Lewy body dementia had a distinguished walking pattern with more variable and asymmetric steps than normal people. These characteristics lead to an increased risk of falls. “The results from this study are exciting as they suggest that walking could be a useful tool to add to the diagnostic toolbox for dementia,” the researcher added. Understanding that different types of dementia may allow researchers to better understand the effects of the disease on the brain and body in earlier stages, aiding treatment and prevention in the future, said McArdle.