Associations between electroencephalography power and Alzheimer's disease in persons with Down syndrome.
A quick EEG can reveal Alzheimer's brain changes in adults with Down syndrome.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers placed sticky EEG caps on adults with Down syndrome. Some had Alzheimer's. Some did not.
They measured how fast or slow the brain waves were. They compared the two groups.
What they found
The Down-Alzheimer group showed more slow waves and fewer fast waves. This pattern matches Alzheimer's in the general population.
The simple EEG test spotted the dementia signature with little cost or stress.
How this fits with other research
Stamoulis et al. (2015) saw the opposite pattern in babies with tuberous sclerosis. Those infants had too many fast waves. Adults in the current study had too few. Age and diagnosis explain the flip.
M Shama et al. (2025) also used EEG spectra to classify autism. They looked at trial-to-trial jitter, not raw power. Both papers show EEG can flag different conditions with different math tricks.
Tassé et al. (2013) linked better parent mental health to lower dementia risk in the same Down syndrome group. The new study adds a brain measure to that story.
Why it matters
You now have a cheap, non-invasive screen for Alzheimer's in adults with Down syndrome. No needles, no long tests. If slow waves climb, refer for full work-up. Pair the EEG with family-wellness checks from Tassé et al. (2013) to build a full risk picture.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: It is complicated to diagnose dementia in persons with Down syndrome (DS). Older studies have, however, demonstrated low-frequency activity in electroencephalography (EEG) in persons with concurrent DS and Alzheimer's disease (DS-AD). The aim of this study was to examine whether it was possible to identify AD-associated changes (increased high-frequency power and decreased low-frequency power) in persons with DS-AD compared with DS. METHODS: We included 21 persons with DS-AD and 16 with DS without cognitive deterioration assessed by the informant-based Dementia Screening Questionnaire in Intellectual Disability. EEG was recorded for all participants. Absolute power for each electrode and global power were calculated for all frequency bands for both eyes open and eyes closed. RESULTS: For global power in the eyes closed condition, we found an increased global slow-frequency activity and a decreased global high-frequency activity in DS-AD compared with DS. In addition, we found a significant difference in the global alpha/delta ratio with the largest difference found for global alpha power in DS-AD compared with DS. CONCLUSIONS: In the current study, we found that changes known to be associated with AD could also be identified when comparing DS-AD with DS using quantitative EEG. In general, these findings suggest that EEG might be a useful tool in diagnosing AD in persons with DS, but larger studies are needed.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2019 · doi:10.1111/jir.12627