Original Work Assessment
My original work for ISM was developing my own screening test for Alzheimer’s Disease. When I was trying to figure out what I can do for my original work, I decided I wanted to go beyond writing a study or a paper. I did not want to make my project a regurgitation of my notes. I wanted something that could potentially have use in the real world. Currently used screening tests like the MOCA and MMSE were created in the late 1900s, and since then, so much research has gone into understanding Alzheimer’s disease. These tests also take 10 minutes or more to complete, which makes it difficult to integrate in a normal primary care check up. Because of these inconveniences, I saw the need to create an updated, shorter, and effective version of an Alzheimer’s disease screening test.
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My first step was understanding more about the disease. I did some preliminary research on what areas of the brain were affected by the neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques. The main area being the hippocampus, the site of memory. This made me wonder if smell identification decreases in patients with alzheimer’s disease. Last year, I was in Anatomy and physiology, and I remembered how the teacher emphasized that memory is closely knit to sense of smell. With more research, I discovered that the entorhinal cortex, the portion of the brain that is in charge of smell, is attacked faster and earlier than the hippocampus. This means, Alzheimer’s patients cannot detect smells. Since, my research has told me that smell is reduced first, adding a smell test would be a great addition to the screening test. Another piece I wanted to add in my screening test was a Vitamin D test. I knew that Vitamin D is associated with the hippocampus, so my thought process was that as the hippocampus shrinks due to degeneration, Vitamin D levels might be tremendously decreased in the blood. Although there were some experiments testing on vitamin D levels and Alzheimer’s disease, there was not enough to prove my point, and there has not been a clear distinction on the function of vitamin D in the hippocampus. Anyway, adding the vitamin D test would make the entire screening test too long, so It was best that I did not add it into my test.
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After I accumulated as much information on Alzheimer’s disease, I decided to look at the currently used screening tests before making my test. I wrote in a document types of questions in the MMSE, MOCA, Mini Cog, and SAGE test. These are the few tests that are primarily used, and are very effective in assessing a person’s mental state. I compared the types of questions, and narrowed down the ones that I believed to be the most determining for Alzheimer’s disease. I chose to work with orientation questions, memory and recall questions, a visuospatial question and a smell test, which is the segment that I added because of recent research. My test ended up being 5 questions long. I also organized the questions in a way that the memory questions were in between other types of questions, so It would make the patient be concentrated on something completely different, and have to recall what they memorized.
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What I found most difficult through this process was not trying to add more into my test. There were so many connections that I made and wanted to check if it had anything to do with Alzheimer’s disease, but there would not be enough research or I did not have enough time to check on it. Also, deciding what exact questions I wanted to incorporate was difficult. There were so many good questions from the previous tests, I did not think that there was anything new for me to come up with. However, I think I compiled a strong group of questions that could be used to identify that someone has some type of cognitive impairment. I am disappointed that I did not get to validate my test, but I hope outside of this assignment, I will be able to test and see if my test is usable in the real world. For my Final Product, I know I want to continue focusing Alzheimer’s disease. This project opened me up to the basics of what Alzheimer’s disease entails and will guide me to figuring out what part of this disease I want to revolve my Final product around.