The way you drive later in life could serve as an early warning sign of cognitive decline or dementia years before symptoms emerge.
Before you start diagnosing every driver in the Phoenix-area with dementia, keep in mind more research is still needed.
Dr. Chia-Ling Phuah is a physician-scientist at Barrow Neurological Institute. She says they analyzed driving data, as well as MRI scans over several years of more than 200 participants who initially did not have memory problems.
“And so what we saw was that people who had more of these white matter damage, they tended over time to drive less. They make fewer trips. They also stick to the same routes every day.”
White matter damage is caused by reduced blood flow to tiny vessels in the brain.
“Those who later on did develop cognitive problems, they were more likely to have these sort of unsafe driving events and crashes.”
And those changes in driving patterns showed up years before the individual was formally diagnosed.
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There were more than 50 million licensed drivers in the U.S. over the age of 65 in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; that was a 77% increase since 2004.
