Sensory Change and Brain Health with Sita Kedia, MD

Webinar · November 12, 2026

Signal.

Every sense you keep
is a memory you get to make.

The earliest signal of brain change is your five senses.

A 50-year-old executive felt fine. Sensory measurement found brain changes standard annual exams were never built to see, and Dr. Kedia is acting on it.

Sita Kedia, MD, MPH, FAHS, FMCP-M · Neurologist · Chief Medical Officer, PALM Health · SuperSenses Science Advisory Board

Chapters2:23The patient4:54The signal11:36The 30 min test12:58Smell20:43Compounding risk22:28Hearing25:41Vision30:33Taste34:04Touch39:09Dashboard42:41MoCA44:42CNS Vital Signs

Why the senses go first

Signal.

Your senses change first.
So start there.

Scans and blood markers can see brain change too. They’re just not where anyone starts. Your senses change first, and they’re easy to measure and measure again. That makes them the first thing you do.

1 · Start here

SuperSenses (inputs). All five senses, easy to repeat.

2 · Then, if it flags

MoCA and CNS Vital Signs (outputs). How thinking is holding up.

3 · Then, if those agree

MRI, PET and blood markers (the brain itself). What’s driving it.

The case

His senses noticed
before he did.

Before
50, no concerns, a full heart and metabolic workup, felt perfectly well.
His senses (inputs)
Sensory Score 52, lower than expected, driven by smell and hearing.
The workup (outputs)
MoCA 22 of 30 (26 is normal). CNS Vital Signs: 13th percentile for executive function, 14th for cognitive flexibility, 19th for verbal memory.
What changed
In Sita’s words, it “changed our team’s approach.”
Read the transcript: Dr. Kedia on this patient

At PALM, we have various memberships and programs, and one of our programs is called the 360 Longevity. And it’s basically our answer for executive health. So in addition to cardiovascular assessment, which is usually common in executive health physicals, we have a detailed brain health evaluation, including sensory testing. And so this is a 50-year-old who came to us in August, had our 360 evaluation. He’s an executive business owner. He had no specific concerns at all about his brain health. I’ve actually known him for five to eight years, and he just wanted to get a good full picture of his health status, like many executives do. So he underwent all the advanced cardiometabolic testing, but then he also did the sensory scores. So you can see here he has a 52, which is below what we would have expected for him. And it was really driven by his low scores in smell and hearing. And so this really just alerted us. And in standard practice, when we’re really taking care of individuals, like in a normal annual preventative health exam, we would have never picked this up. We would have never thought to start thinking about his brain health at 50. And now, this has really changed our team’s approach in taking care of this individual, and he’s excited to actually make impact on these scores over time.

Sita Kedia, MD, Chief Medical Officer, PALM Health · Sensory Change and Brain Health webinar, November 12, 2026

From the doctor’s chair

Brain care should start
while you still feel fine.

Without SuperSenses
He’s 50, has no complaints, and his labs are fine. Nobody orders a memory test. See you next year.
1 · Test his thinking
He gets a MoCA and CNS Vital Signs he never would have been given. They came back 22, and the 13th to 19th percentile on exactly the skills that predict decline later. That’s two independent signals, agreeing.
2 · Rule out the boring causes
For smell: his nose, sinus disease, COVID history, head injury, smoking and his medications. For hearing: his ears and a formal hearing test. For his whole body: B12, thyroid, sleep and inflammation. Many low senses have a fixable cause, and that’s a win, not a dead end.
3 · If clean, go deeper
Low smell plus low hearing plus weak executive function at 50 is a reason to look harder at the brain: an MRI, the newer blood markers, and a talk about family history.
4 · Treat what can be treated
Hearing aids if the hearing test confirms it, tight control of blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar, sleep, and exercise. Smell training if smell is the issue.
5 · Retest in 3 to 6 months
Now there’s a trend line, not one snapshot. Smell that recovers after treating his sinuses means one thing. Smell that keeps dropping with a clean nose exam means something else entirely. Only repeat testing tells those apart, and memory tests don’t repeat well.

It told his doctor who to look at,
where to look, and how to know it’s working.

Play it forward

His next ten years,
two ways.

Without the signal
With the signal
Now
Without the signal: His exam says he’s fine.
With the signal: His senses flag change at 50.
Next
Without the signal: Nobody looks.
With the signal: His team looks for the cause: medication, inflammation, circulation, or the brain itself.
Then
Without the signal: His senses keep slipping and add their own load.
With the signal: Whatever is treatable gets treated, including the senses where they add load.
Later
Without the signal: Care starts when memory slips.
With the signal: Retests show whether it’s working.
What the research says
14 modifiable risk factors account for about 45% of dementia (Lancet, 2024). Where hearing is part of the picture, treating it is tied to about a third lower dementia risk (Cribb, 2026) and slowed decline 48% in adults at higher risk (ACHIEVE, 2023).

Best case, based on published research. Individual results vary.

What happens after a low score

Every result comes
with a next step.

Your dashboard
Every patient’s five senses in one view, with your next step and retest date.
Their app
Your recommendations land on the patient’s phone, with exercises and a retest reminder.
Your referrals
Your own ENT and audiology contacts, built in.
How it runs
30 min. At home, or run by your staff in the clinic.

“It’s such an interactive test that people enjoy the 30 minutes.”

Sita Kedia, MD, MPH, FAHS, FMCP-M

SuperSenses provider dashboard showing each sense, the suggested next step and retest timing (demo data)

Provider dashboard · demo data

The loop

Measure. Manage.
Repeat.

01MeasureFive senses, one Sensory Score, 30 min per patient.
02ManageA next step per sense, routed into the care you already run.
03RepeatSee what changed, and prove your care is working.
Sita Kedia, MD, MPH, FAHS, FMCP-M

“In a normal annual preventative health exam, we would have never picked this up.”

Sita Kedia, MD, MPH, FAHS, FMCP-M

Live long.
Stay you.

Take the test yourself → Book a call →

For clinicians: request a kit and see your own Sensory Score.
Or email datar@super-senses.com

See the clinic playbook →

The case in brief

A 50-year-old executive with no symptoms took SuperSenses, a standardized multisensory measurement of all five senses, as part of an executive health evaluation at PALM Health in St. Louis. His Sensory Score was 52, lower than expected, driven by smell and hearing. Because of those results his care team ran a MoCA, which came back 22 of 30 (26 is normal), and CNS Vital Signs placed him at the 13th to 19th percentile for executive function, cognitive flexibility and verbal memory. In the words of Sita Kedia, MD, the results changed her team’s approach to his care. Memory tests measure what comes out of the brain; SuperSenses measures what goes in, the five senses, which change first, so it tells clinicians who needs further testing and where to look.