Study may help clinicians use sleep brain wave patterns to diagnose dementia and other forms of cognitive impairment

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Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Certain brain wave patterns that occur while an individual sleeps may be assessed by clinicians to help them diagnose dementia and other conditions related to memory, language, and thinking.  A new study published in Sleep that was led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) could help improve automated methods for detecting these brain wave patterns, or sleep spindles, and for correlating them with cognitive function.

Sleep spindles are bursts of activity that occur during non-REM and can be assessed through electroencephalograms (EECs) involving…

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