[HN Gopher] Driving may reveal early signs of Alzheimer's
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Driving may reveal early signs of Alzheimer's
Author : bananapear
Score : 58 points
Date : 2021-07-13 09:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| spockz wrote:
| > Specifically, those with preclinical Alzheimer's tended to
| drive more slowly, make abrupt changes, travel less at night, and
| logged fewer miles overall, for example. They also visited a
| smaller variety of destinations when driving, sticking to
| slightly more confined routes.
|
| I wonder what the direction of the causality is. Maybe there is
| something else that triggers the slow driving. Visiting the same
| destinations regularly instead of varying ones might also just
| point to a very routine lifestyle. Maybe that contributes to
| Alzheimer's a lot? It feels a stretch to use these attributes as
| casuals for attribution of Alzheimer's.
| kortex wrote:
| There have been some interesting findings in aging studies
| (e.g. the 90+ study [0]) that suggest some people who have all
| the physiological signs of Alzheimers, but show no symptoms of
| dementia.
|
| I suspect the arrow goes: X -> brain
| degradation brain degradation -> cognitive decline
| cognitive decline -> driving bad brain degradation ->
| post-mortem Alzheimers diagnosis
|
| The loose link there is the path from brain degradation to
| cognitive decline. The 90+ findings (plus other findings on TBI
| and plasticity) suggest that by maintaining high plasticity
| through brain assaults (old age, trauma), it seems the brain
| can "route around damage" and remain comparatively functional.
|
| [0] The 90+ study: https://mind.uci.edu/research-
| studies/90plus-study/
|
| 60 Minutes on Superagers - Video + Transcript:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/long-life-retirement-community-...
| spockz wrote:
| > [0] The 90+ study: https://mind.uci.edu/research-
| studies/90plus-study/
|
| This plasticity idea is really neat. Anecdotal and I don't
| know the correlation holds up, but my one grandmother was
| very set in her habits and particularly mindset and died
| early of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. My other grandmother is
| flexible of mind and is still kicking it at 90+.
|
| I'm wondering which way the causality goes. Whether there is
| something physical which makes people more open minded and
| wandering whereas others are more closed which eventually
| leads to more brain diseases. So in the end the open
| mindedness / flexibility is just another indirect indicator.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I think the goal is only to have an early warning of medical
| issues, rather than finding a causal effect and preventing the
| issues.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Without the measured changes being caused by Alzheimer's, it
| is unlikely they will have any specificity. On the other
| hand, the results reported here give at least circumstantial
| evidence for this causality.
| kian wrote:
| Insurance companies will be all over personal data (search,
| location, and profiles) so that they can statistically
| discriminate against their clients beyond what they have been
| thus far able. HIPAA is fairly toothless in many ways, and
| doesn't even cover cases like this. It's time to start
| implementing criminal penalties for illegally exfiltrating
| private health data before it is too late.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Isn't statistical discrimination the basis of fair cohort
| definition in insurance underwriting?
|
| What do you think insurance, as a financial product, is? An
| entity looking to hedge against financial uncertainty relies on
| being placed in a cohort that represents equivalent risk
| profile to their own.
| plainnoodles wrote:
| I think insurance is nothing but a serendipitous, temporary
| alignment of finance, levels of information
| availability/tracking, and the fundamental right of all
| humans to life and health.
|
| Right now, despite their best efforts, insurance companies
| are still fairly limited in their ability to discriminate and
| exclude certain swathes of people from access to affordable
| healthcare. Once they manage it, they become useless to us as
| a society.
|
| Ideally, we as a society want all of our members to be able
| to see a doctor when they are sick or injured.
|
| Ideally, insurance companies want to exclusively insure
| people to whom they will never need to pay out. They optimize
| their profit margin to be essentially 100%. Which then makes
| them a leech, and they're probably a leech well below 100% as
| well.
|
| (To be fair, since the system is completely inhuman,
| individuals will also play the same game and try to leave the
| risk pool if they are sufficiently low-risk.)
|
| So, there will come a time when we have to either give up any
| facade that we value human health intrinsically, or we must
| stop using private insurance as the primary method of
| ensuring it (no pun intended).
| bananapear wrote:
| In the UK it's commonplace for insurers to offer "black box"
| policies, where a small device including GPS and accelerometers
| with an mobile internet connection must be fitted to the
| vehicle in exchange for a discount.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| I wouldn't place one of those in my car if it made the
| insurance free. I understand why they do it(both parties),
| but I also think it's disgusting.
| atatatat wrote:
| Google has the majority of it via legal means..., we need to
| get a handle on our governments before we even try to protect
| our digital info...
| nazrulmum10 wrote:
| Although this potential scenario is a long way off for the
| insurance market, it's something that might worry existing owners
| of black boxes who have already experienced issues with their
| devices' accuracy in the past.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Google or Apple, who also know our location, can start targeting
| Alzheimer ads to people.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| First there must be products that target the disease.
| Minor49er wrote:
| Google can simply start marketing residential care ads to the
| individual as well as their family.
| ianbooker wrote:
| I think their AI is already doing that.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Long term care? Insurance?
|
| There doesn't need to be a cure or treatment for companies to
| make money from it.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Specifically, those with preclinical Alzheimer's tended to
| drive more slowly, make abrupt changes, travel less at night, and
| logged fewer miles overall, for example. They also visited a
| smaller variety of destinations when driving, sticking to
| slightly more confined routes.
|
| Aside from the abrupt changes this could describe my driving
| habits. I hate driving, driving at night most of all.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Presumably there is some presumption that everyone in the study
| has more or less the same driving needs. Possibly for a small
| area in MO, that might be true, or at least close enough. I
| mean, I don't drive much either, but I live in a place where I
| don't have to. I don't need the car to get to work or do most
| of my ordinary errands. Now, if they want to track my bike,
| they might get more data.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Yeah, what if I learned to drive late in my life and am simply
| not confident enough? Or maybe I take speed limits seriously?
| xeromal wrote:
| My take from the article is that the deviation happens over
| time from your preexisting baseline. So it's not your current
| habits, its that tracking your habits over time will show a
| difference.
| tines wrote:
| I have some bad news for you buddy
| jsight wrote:
| I was thinking that these changes weren't described in specific
| enough detail too. I mean, these could also be used to guess
| age in general, if I'm reading it right.
| ben_w wrote:
| I know this is merely an anecdote, but this fits what I saw in my
| mother. I was learning to drive, visited the parents, we went on
| a practice drive... and she found speed sufficiently frightening
| that she asked me to limit myself to 40 MPH, while we were on a
| 70 MPH dual carriageway A-road. My driving lessons came with a
| booklet saying doing under 50 on such a road (in normal
| conditions) would be considered dangerous.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > My driving lessons came with a booklet saying doing under 50
| on such a road (in normal conditions) would be considered
| dangerous.
|
| Yes! A slow driver (under 50) can cause very high closing
| speeds for drivers who aren't paying attention. A likely
| accident scenario could be a driver who tailgates a white van
| that is itself closing fast on the slow vehicle, blocking the
| view of the tailgater (all are in the inside lane). If the van
| makes a late overtaking manoeuvre (to avoid the slow vehicle)
| rather than smoothly braking, the tailgater has very little
| time to react, and depending on traffic density, might not
| themselves be able to change lanes.
|
| I saw this exact situation happen a few days ago. I was in lane
| 2 about 100m further back down the road. The van changed lanes
| at the last possible moment. The tailgater slammed on his
| brakes and came very close to shunting the slow vehicle.
| Luckily there was no-one behind him so a braking wave didn't
| propagate back down the lane.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I wish. Unfortunately the moron causing the hazard almost
| never gets caught up in the resulting accident like you
| describe.
|
| What happens is you wind up with a merge (and all the
| shenanigans that causes) behind the blockage and given a long
| enough duration you eventually run into the case someone
| doesn't check their mirrors/blind spot and hits someone who's
| not on their A-game because there's no exit there and they're
| not expecting the person to merge there.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Funny how you'd blame the slow driver rather than the driver
| not paying attention and/or tailgating.
|
| What if the "slow driver" was a normal driver who just got a
| puncture and was slowing down?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >What if the "slow driver" was a normal driver who just got
| a puncture and was slowing down?
|
| Then they'd have a good excuse.
|
| Same with the shitbox running on 3cyl.
|
| Same with the concrete truck that pretty much has to drive
| under the prevailing speed uphill because it's so slow.
|
| To voluntarily create a hazard when you can "just not" by
| behaving like everyone else (which is not exactly an
| activity that requires a lot of cognitive thought) is
| simply asinine.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Just to be clear, I didn't assign blame when describing my
| little scenario. The slow driver is creating an avoidable
| problem that increases the impact of the poor driving
| behaviours exhibited by the other drivers (going too fast,
| too close). All three are doing at least one thing wrong.
| ceh123 wrote:
| If the slow driver is fully capable of driving a normal
| speed and makes the choice to drive well below the speed
| limit, they are making a choice that directly increases the
| probability of an accident (regardless of if they are
| involved in the actual accident or not).
|
| If the slow car has an issue that makes it so that they
| cannot go any faster they should be putting their hazards
| on and slowing down, in which case it would be the drivers
| who are not paying attention's fault.
|
| Really in both cases the drivers not paying attention share
| some of the blame, but in the first case the slow driver is
| _also_ being irresponsible.
| wirthjason wrote:
| Specifically, those with preclinical Alzheimer's tended to drive
| more slowly, make abrupt changes, travel less at night, and
| logged fewer miles overall, for example. They also visited a
| smaller variety of destinations when driving, sticking to
| slightly more confined routes.
|
| Isn't this pretty much everyone as they get older? Who hasn't
| seem these traits in older relatives?
|
| Everyone I know who gets older tends to drive less at night
| because as you get old your eyesight gets worse --- particularly
| if you've had cataract surgery, which are people who are in the
| study / risk group.
|
| Unless I missed a more nuanced point this article reads like "old
| age is a good predictor of Alzheimer's."
| cogman10 wrote:
| > particularly if you've had cataract surgery
|
| Cataract surgery should improve night vision. Those with
| cataracts generally have much worse night vision because their
| vision is clouded.
|
| If night vision is worse, it could indicate that the person
| needs a follow up with their eye surgeon and possibly follow up
| surgery to adjust the IOL.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| I think the quote ties in with what else we know about
| Alzheimers: it tends to develop in those with smaller social
| circles, in those who experience less novelty and less healthy
| lifestyles. If the person is out in society learning a new
| language, meeting new people, learning a new instrument,
| exercising their minds' regenerative capacities, that's a great
| "counter" to aging.
|
| If they're sitting at home, not driving anywhere, watching
| cable news all day, that's a recipe for rutted-grooves of
| thought and deterioration of the mind.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I tend to drive relatively little, visit fairly few distinct
| places, and generally take the same route each time I visit
| them. I'm also not a huge fan of night driving. I don't think
| I drive particularly slowly or make too many abrupt changes
| (I've never had an accident involving another car, am never
| the slowest one on the freeway, and have never had a
| complaint from any of my passengers).
|
| The interesting part for me here is that these behaviors _do_
| , in fact, reflect a neurological issue I have with
| visual/spatial processing. In a nutshell, I get lost easily,
| because it takes me much more time to associate visual
| landmarks with a travel route than the typical human. I
| suspect my dog has a far, far better sense of direction than
| do I. :P
|
| I'm not even close to old enough to have preclinical signs of
| Alzheimer's, yet, but I shall have to remember to remind my
| doctors of my visual-spatial issues in a few decades when I
| am.
| Kluny wrote:
| Got a bit of a victim-blamey vibe here. Intuitively it makes
| sense that if you're more active and social, you don't get
| Alzheimer's - but it's also pretty tough to separate
| correlation and causation. Does being shut-in cause
| Alzheimer's, or do people end up being shut-ins because of
| Alzheimer's? Intuition is often wrong.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Personally, my processing speed and reaction time fell off a
| cliff in my early 40s. I used to be a more aggressive driver
| but had to back off because I can't handle the flood of
| information now. It's easy to overlook things and miss objects
| and cars so I have to check twice.
| bsder wrote:
| > It's easy to overlook things and miss objects and cars so I
| have to check twice.
|
| How about: "You weren't as good as you thought, and you just
| missed it when you were younger."
|
| If you look at driving accidents, they fall continuously
| until you are about 30. And they don't start rising again
| until you are about 75-80.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| Interesting, I'm certainly older than that but i feel i can
| still handle trafic pretty well but i drive slower because i
| stopped giving a crap if i get late somewhere or i get out
| earlier and i'm less aggressive because I realize it's
| pointless. If that's getting old i'm happy with it.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Age was another input into the model. However, it's no surprise
| that the _signs_ of aging correlate strongly with Alzheimer 's.
| While one 70 year old in very good mental/physical health may
| be very active including driving, another may seem and "act" a
| lot older.
|
| In particular, Driving from point A to point B depends on a
| certain kind of memory that degrades quickly in Alzheimer's.
| Forgetting names is one thing but forgetting whole places is
| another.
|
| * Making abrupt changes: perhaps they are suddenly recalling
| something they need to do like turn onto a certain street? Not
| quite sure. * Driving at night removes a lot of visual cues
| putting an even larger emphasis on memory. * Longer travels &
| having more destinations both depend on memory so that one
| makes sense.
| rahulnair23 wrote:
| From the full paper[1]:
|
| > All models were trained on 70% of the data and tested on the
| remaining 30% of the data. Note that each month record for each
| participant was considered an independent data point.
|
| I'm almost certain that this is a mining leak.
|
| Data from one patient will end up both in the training and test
| set and result in fantastic accuracy. Of course it will be from
| different months. The correct way to do this is to cross-
| validate/split across the population. It seems unlikely, from
| this description, that the authors have done so.
|
| [1]
| https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-021...
| mattkrause wrote:
| Definitely.
|
| It's a very common error and it _should_ be easy to catch
| but....I 've even seen a study that treated individual slices
| of an MRI as independent, which is laughably wrong.
|
| I think part of the problem is that the "analysts" are
| increasingly uninvolved in the data collection, and just treat
| it as a tuple of (X, y). If you thought about what they mean,
| even for a second, ("Oh, Mr. Smith is always an awful driver"),
| the problem is obvious.
| NwtnsMthd wrote:
| I'm somewhat unfamiliar with the problem, do you think you
| could explain why this is bad? Or maybe just point me in the
| right direction? Thanks!
| kirykl wrote:
| Overfits for study participants. Will Not necessarily give
| same results on gen pop
| rahulnair23 wrote:
| One way to tell if a Machine Learning model is any good is to
| see how it does on unseen/new patients.
|
| Of course, we don't wait to try it on real patients, so
| typically you'd partition the data you have already into (a)
| what you show to the machine learner (training data), and (b)
| what you hide from the learner (test data). The latter is
| only used to evaluate, i.e. you get the answer from the ML
| model and compare it to the real answer you have already. If
| information about the test data some how makes it to the
| training data, its referred to as a mining leak [1].
|
| In this paper, they treat each month of a patient as an
| independent observation. However, GPS driver behaviour will
| be very similar from one month to the next for the same
| person. Genetic information is exactly the same. So for every
| month that the model is tested (test data), the learner has
| already seen very similar data in the training set - for some
| of the other months (for the same person) that happen to be
| in the training set. The split is typically done randomly. So
| it will do well.
|
| The test results are therefore optimistic and do not support
| the conclusions.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leakage_(machine_learning)
| CaptainNegative wrote:
| Suppose that you have 3 data points, on June 14, 15, and 16,
| that due to personal driving quirks all appear to belong to
| the same person. If the 14th and 16th are in your dataset,
| and both correspond to Alzheimer-free Bob, that may be a
| strong hint that the data from the 15th is also Alzheimer-
| free.
|
| But this doesn't help you in the real world where you won't
| necessarily have near neighbors corresponding to the same
| person, with a known diagnosis.
| fujidust wrote:
| Autopilot-style driver aids can mess with these data points to
| some extent. Still very interesting that diversity in destination
| is considered an indicator.
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