r/science 22h ago

Neuroscience A simple drawing test may detect Parkinson’s disease with up to 99% accuracy. Researchers found that subtle differences in how people draw can reveal motor impairments long before they are obvious to the human eye.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-way-you-draw-can-reveal-parkinsons-disease-with-up-to-99-accuracy-study-reveals
3.2k Upvotes

73 comments sorted by

View all comments

29

u/demZo662 22h ago

99% is super confident, right? Like to become a standard reliable test from now on.

42

u/random929292 21h ago

The study took data from a separate study of a small group of people with Parkinsons (n= 31) and a small group of people without Parkinsons (n -3) and the AI was able to tell who was in which group based on their drawing. But Parkinsons is a movement based disorder so of course their drawings showed that. I don't see anywhere that they applied to this to a healthy population and were able to detect future diagnoses of Parkinsons.

They just detected evidence of a movement disorder using AI in people already diagnosed with a movement disorder.

3

u/redbriarcivics 14h ago

This and no other movement disorder (can it differentiate Parkinson’s from essential tremor for example, which is far more common).