Alzheimer's Disease: Understanding Biomarkers, Big Data, and Therapy

by Ahmed Moustafa Ph.D

Overview

Nearly 44 million people have Alzheimer’s or related dementia worldwide, according to the Alzheimer’s Disease International organization. That number is expected to double every 20 years. Unlike other books on the market, Alzheimer's Disease: Understanding Biomarkers, Big Data, and Therapy covers recent advancements in cognitive, clinical, neural, and therapeutic aspects of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

First, readers are introduced to cognitive and clinical studies, focusing on the different types of memory impairment, past and future thinking. This includes the prevalence of depression, its relationship to other symptoms, and the quality of life for those with Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, the book discusses recent studies on memory dysfunction in advanced-stage Alzheimer’s disease, in comparison to early-stage, including a chapter on the underlying factors in the transition from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Following this section, the book presents recent studies on the role of different cortical and subcortical structures in the development of various symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as different neural biomarkers underlying the development and treatment of the disease. In the last section of the book, therapeutic aspects of Alzheimer’s disease, focusing on behavioral and pharmacological treatments of sleep disorders, memory problems, and depression, are reviewed. The book aids readers in understanding the advances in research and care, making it a prime tool for all clinicians, psychologists, researchers, neurologists, and caregivers of dementia patients.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780128213346
Publisher:	Elsevier Science
Publication date:	09/15/2021
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Dr. Ahmed Moustafa is a Professor of Psychology and Computational Modeling at School of Psychology, Bond University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. Prior to moving to Bond University, Ahmed was an associate professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at Marcs Institute for Brain, Behavior, and Development & School of Psychology, Western Sydney University. Ahmed is trained in computer science, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. His early training took place at Cairo University in mathematics and computer science. Before joining Western Sydney University as a lab director, Ahmed spent 11 years in America working on several psychology and neuroscience projects. Ahmed conducts research on computational and neuropsychological studies of addiction, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, PTSD, depression, Alzheimer’s disease. He has published over 240 papers in high-ranking journals including Science, PNAS, Journal of Neuroscience, Brain, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Nature (Parkinson’s disease), Neuron, among others. Ahmed has obtained grant funding from Australia, USA, Qatar, UAE, Turkey, and other countries. Ahmed has recently published ten books: (1) Computational models of brain and behavior; (2) Social Cognition in Psychosis, (3) computational Neuroscience Models of the Basal Ganglia, (4) Cognitive, Clinical, and Neural Aspects of Drug Addiction; (5) The Nature of Depression: An updated review; (6) Big data in psychiatry and neurology; (7) Alzheimer’s Disease: Understanding Biomarkers, Big Data, and Therapy. Elsevier; (8) Cognitive and Behavioral Dysfunction in Schizophrenia; (9) Female Pioneers from Ancient Egypt and the Middle East; and (10) Mental health effects of COVID-19. In the last 10 years, Ahmed has published collaboratively with 71 colleagues, has more than 510 co-authors, from 35 institutions in 14 countries. Ahmed is now Editor-in-Chief of Discover Psychology, a new journal by Springer Nature.

Table of Contents

Part I: Mental Health in Dementia
1. Measures of depression in Alzheimer’s disease
Ahmed A. Moustafa, Wafa Jaroudi, Lily Bilson and Mohamad El Haj
2. The nature of depression in dementia: A narrative review
Ahmed A. Moustafa, Phoebe Bailey, Wafa Jaroudi, Lily Bilson and Mohamad El Haj
3. Stress and anxiety in dementia
Ahmed A. Moustafa, Shimaa Adel Heikal and Wafa Jaroudi

Part II: Advanced Topics in Dementia Research
4. Alzheimer's disease in the pupil: Pupillometry as a biomarker of cognitive processing in Alzheimer’s Disease
Ahmed A. Moustafa and Mohamad El Haj
5. Cognitive and neural correlates of vitamin D deficiency: Focus on healthy aging and Alzheimer’s Disease
Ahmed A. Moustafa, Wafa Jaroudi and Abdrabo Soliman
6. The effect of Alzheimer’s Disease on the thalamus
Ahmed A. Moustafa and Rasu Karki
7. Using big data methods to understand Alzheimer's Disease
Ahmed A. Moustafa, Samuel L. Warren and Hany Alashwal
8. Operational aspects of deep learning solutions for Alzheimer's Disease
Ahmed A. Moustafa, Dustin van der Haar and Samuel L. Warren

Part III: Treatment of Dementia
9. Treatment of depression in Alzheimer's Disease
Ahmed A. Moustafa, Lily Bilson and Wafa Jaroudi
10. Developing a vulnerability to negative affect scale for music interventions for people with dementia
Ahmed A. Moustafa, Sandra Garrido and Wafa Jaroudi
11. Using music to improve mental health in people with dementia
Ahmed A. Moustafa, Wafa Jaroudi and Sandra Garrido
12. The efficacy of Donepezil for the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease
Ahmed A. Moustafa and Samuel L. Warren

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A complete overview of recent studies on cognitive, clinical, neural, and therapeutic aspects of Alzheimer’s disease

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Jane Lee, MD (Northwell Health)
Description: This book covers many topics related to Alzheimer's disease. It includes relevant psychiatric illnesses associated with Alzheimer's, advances in research and technological contributions, and current treatments in people with dementia. I thought it was interesting to begin the book with a section on depression in Alzheimer's disease instead of the usual basic pathophysiology or anatomy of the disease itself.
Purpose: The purpose of this book is to share diagnostic information regarding dementia (in particular Alzheimer's disease), present up-to-date views on how mental health is affected in the dementia population, and explore new research as well as current treatment for the disease. It is worthy to bring up how Alzheimer's disease patients suffer not only from progressing neurologic disease but also from mental health illnesses. In addition, it is interesting to share research efforts to improve the diagnostic methods. The book does meet the objectives as it sums up the recent understanding of Alzheimer's disease and discusses possible cutting-edge diagnostic methods and treatment of the disease.
Audience: The book will benefit graduate students more than anyone since it discusses deep learning and research methods. The end of the book will benefit practitioners as it gives information about the efficacy of current treatments. The author is credible as the facts in each chapter are based on publications cited. The author also serves as an active contributor in the field.
Features: The book helps readers to understand how psychological research is being performed in Alzheimer's disease patients. It also does a great job in pointing out the difficulty in performing such research as dementia studies require more longitudinal collection of data. Then, it suggests possible solutions of using big database research methods to accelerate new findings in the field. Overall, I found learning about research methods and different types of analyses interesting as it is not always taught in medical school or in the field. It feels out of place to have information regarding the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease in chapter 7 instead of in the beginning. The book may possibly benefit from organizing the sequence of chapters to help readers understand the disease first prior to going into mental health in the disease population, ongoing research, and treatments.
Assessment: This book is most likely to be useful to readers who design research studies in Alzheimer's diseases. It provides disease pathology in relatively easy-to-understand phrases based on recent literature and discusses research models in which the disease can be studied best. It may be questionable as to how much clinicians are going to benefit from reading the book when treating patients in a clinical setting. Compared to other books that talk about the specific biochemical neuropathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease, such as Neurodegenerative Disorders: Loss of Function through Gain of Function, Beyreuther et al. (Springer, 2001), this book provides a much more general overview and psychological aspect of Alzheimer's disease.

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