Smartphone app could help detect early-onset dementia cause, study finds

Frontotemporal dementia affects the part of the brain responsible for skills such as the capacity to plan ahead and control impulses. Photograph: Andrew Brookes/Getty Images/Image Source

A smartphone app could help detect a leading cause of early-onset dementia in people who are at high risk of developing it, data suggests.

Scientists have demonstrated that cognitive tests done via a smartphone app are at least as sensitive at detecting early signs of frontotemporal dementia in people with a genetic predisposition to the condition as medical evaluations performed in clinics.