{"id":462,"date":"2026-10-02T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T16:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/?p=462"},"modified":"2026-10-05T11:28:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T15:28:26","slug":"ais-growing-role-in-the-fight-against-alzheimers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/2026\/10\/02\/ais-growing-role-in-the-fight-against-alzheimers\/","title":{"rendered":"AI’s Growing Role in the Fight Against Alzheimer’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

post by BU-SHARP Writing Fellow Lindsay Griesman<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

From decoding DNA to designing drugs, artificial intelligence is changing both how fast Alzheimer\u2019s discoveries happen and how scientists make them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For decades, scavenging human DNA for markers of Alzheimer\u2019s has been like reading a book one letter at a time. Researchers at USC are now using a \u201cgenomic language model\u201d that can detect subtler influences across thousands of genes at once, which could guide new drugs aimed at preventing or treating the disease. Paul Thompson, director of the <\/span>ENIGMA <\/span><\/a>Consortium, compares AI to a \u201cnew telescope to survey the universe\u201d (<\/span>Levin<\/span><\/a>, 2026)<\/span><\/p>\n

That shift reflects a broader trend. The use of AI in medical diagnostics has grown significantly from image analysis to treatment planning to drug development and disease prediction (<\/span>Zhang<\/span><\/a> et al.<\/span><\/a>). It is a fast moving field in dementia research.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Listening for early warning signs<\/b><\/h2>\n

\"\"Some of the most promising work is happening here at Boston University. In 2024, BU researchers developed an <\/span>easy-to-use AI tool<\/span><\/a> that identifies people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who are likely to develop Alzheimer\u2019s disease within six years. The model works from speech instead of relying on scans or lab tests. The team used recorded neuropsychological test interviews from the <\/span>Framingham Heart Study<\/span><\/a>, transcribed them with automated speech recognition, and trained models to predict who would develop the disease. The model analyzes what people say, such as word choice and sentence structure, rather than how they say it, such as enunciation or speed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The results were encouraging. The best models, which combined speech-derived features with age, sex, and education level, reached 78.5% accuracy and 81.1% sensitivity in predicting MCI-to-Alzheimer\u2019s progression within six years. In an <\/span>interview <\/span><\/a>with <\/span>Andrew Thurston<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Ioannis Paschalidis<\/span><\/a>, lead researcher and director of BU\u2019s Hariri Institute for Computing, says that early detection gives scientists more opportunities to study the disease and its progression. They also highlight the practicality of a development like this: a fully automated procedure could become an inexpensive and widely accessible screening tool that supports remote assessment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Care and Prevention<\/b><\/h3>\n

Outside the lab, <\/span>Alzheimer\u2019s Society<\/span><\/a> says AI will never replace person-to-person care but could help people with dementia live at home longer. Vanderbilt\u2019s <\/span>Timothy Hohman<\/span><\/a> adds that apps and wearables could track modifiable risk factors like hearing loss, cardiovascular health, and sleep.<\/span><\/p>\n

A tool, not a shortcut<\/b><\/h4>\n

Experts stress that human judgment still matters. Hohman warns that biased training data produced biased models, which could worsen health disparities. Ultimately, although an incredibly innovative tool, AI cannot fully replace the training, expertise, and experience of healthcare professionals, but this marks a major step forward in the journey to end Alzheimer’s.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

post by BU-SHARP Writing Fellow Lindsay Griesman\u00a0 From decoding DNA to designing drugs, artificial intelligence is changing both how fast Alzheimer\u2019s discoveries happen and how scientists make them.\u00a0 For decades, scavenging human DNA for markers of Alzheimer\u2019s has been like reading a book one letter at a time. Researchers at USC are now using a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25693,"featured_media":465,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25693"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":469,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/busharp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}