Art may reveal early signs of dementia

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At her art therapy class in Leeds, Joyce Cope is carefully painting a tree.

Despite living with dementia, her brushstrokes are measured and steady, the legacy of her years of painting as a talented amateur.

Her work today is very different to the highly detailed pieces she used to produce - expert reproductions of Old Masters such as "Girl With the Peal Earring" by the 17th century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.

Joyce's daughter, Hazel, says her mum still enjoys painting, but before the disease took hold her work was really striking.

"They were really good copies of the Old Masters and very detailed.

"She's not as detailed now.

"She can remember things from years ago, but generally if you asked her what she had for breakfast this morning she can't remember."

But can art - more specifically, the way artists work - tell us something about the development of dementia and other degenerative brain diseases?

A minute analysis of the brushstrokes used by artists who developed neurological diseases reveals intriguing clues about changes in the brain that occurred years before any symptoms became obvious.

The mathematical method is called "fractal analysis", which is a way of looking at recurring patterns that occur both in maths and in nature.

Trees and clouds are said to be "fractal", as are the recurring patterns of our brainwaves and heartbeats.

The same applies to the individual brushstrokes of artists, which can be compared to their individual handwriting.

Psychologist Alex Forsythe from Liverpool University carried out a fractal analysis of more than two thousand works by seven famous artists and found tiny changes in those patterns.

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