Memory testing/research

I've been engaging with a few people who follow the Aging Well Support Group on the topic of improving our sense of smell, which can also improve memory. One thing led to another, and I'm starting this new discussion to flag the Alzheimer Prevention Trials (APT) Webstudy, which "helps individuals 50 and older track their memory with a series of online, no-cost tests that take just 20 minutes every three and six months" at https://www.aptwebstudy.org/. It's a simple way to track your personal memory condition, while helping in dementia research. If you've never heard of it, you might check it out.

I've discovered that my performance so far bounces around, but not in a big range. So it took a year or so before I was confident that the results were meaningful. It also made me a bit skeptical of a single test of any sort on a single day in a doctor's office. I now think that any given pencil-and-paper (like, for example, the Mini MoCA: https://mocacognition.com/paper/) or interview-based test for very early indications of memory decline can be influenced by whether we're having a good day or a bad day when the test is taken. I'm sure the tests work great if you are well into a dementia journey, but if you are trying for an early indicator, it helps to start by setting a personal baseline before your memory loss is serious, not use the baseline of whatever is "normal" for "most people". "Normal" for "most people" may not be "normal" for any one of us. If we start taking these tests early, we define our own "normal", so if we can monitor our own memory trends off our own baselines rather than try to pull meaning out of an individual data point.

None of this applies to the new blood tests, of course, which have different accuracy issues.