Machine Learning for Predicting Cognitive Diseases: Methods, Data Sources and Risk Factors

Machine learning and data mining approaches are being successfully applied to different fields of life sciences for the past 20 years. Medicine is one of the most suitable application domains for these techniques since they help model diagnostic information based on causal and/or statistical data and therefore reveal hidden dependencies between symptoms and illnesses. In this paper we give a detailed overview of the recent machine learning research and its applications for predicting cognitive diseases, especially the Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment and the Parkinson's disease. We survey different state-of-the-art methodological approaches, data sources and public data, and provide their comparative analysis. We conclude by identifying the open problems within the field that include an early detection of the cognitive diseases and inclusion of machine learning tools into diagnostic practice and therapy planning.