MADISON, Wis. -- Some groundbreaking research being done at the University of Wisconsin could greatly affect those at risk for Alzheimer's disease.

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The goal of the research is to try to identify Alzheimer's disease before symptoms start occurring, and researchers believe to do that, they must look at the brain. That's exactly what Dr. Sterling Johnson is doing. He's been doing work where healthy people -- both with a family history of Alzheimer's disease and without -- have MRIs done while performing memory tasks.

The resulting scans have presented a landmark finding: Those with a family history have less activity in the memory center of their brain, and this is showing up nearly 20 years before most people would show symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, WISC-TV reported.

Maxine Austin is participating because her father died of the disease last year.

"I think there's a lot of factors, not the least of them being a selfish motivation that maybe they'll find something that will help me if I get Alzheimer's," said Austin. "And a big part of it was because of Dad; it's an emotional thing."

Austin's father was diagnosed with the disease in 1993. Shortly after that time, she said she took over his care.

"If there is a genetic factor and I'm at risk, then my children are at risk and my grandchildren," said Austin.

Austin's husband, Dennis Dresang, is also participating in the study in the control group, as he has no family history. He said his experience with Alzheimer's disease in his wife's family is a motivator.

"You can just see the effects happen on a personal human level, and combine that with the statistics, it's sort of like you just have to do it," said Dresang.

The Alzheimer's Association said that once every 72 seconds someone in America develops Alzheimer's disease, and finding an early diagnosis for the disease is the top priority of people in the field.

"We want to see if we can pinpoint it in its pre-symptomatic phase," said Johnson.

Johnson's scans are showing that the memory center of the brain, or hippocampus, shows up less active in the group of participants with a family history of the disease. The key to the finding is that his participants are average age 55, where symptoms and a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease usually happen around average age 73 when the brain is usually in an advanced stage of the disease.

"What it is doing is helping us pinpoint the disease and giving us the rationale to look more aggressively at people who are at risk for Alzheimer's disease," said Johnson. "The field has really put a premium on early diagnosis and early detection, because by the time we see the patient in clinic, there's extensive degenerative change happening in the brain, so if we can identify the disease earlier, perhaps we can intervene before there's an extensive loss of brain cells."

Johnson said the finding is far from a diagnostic tool but could tell us much more about the progression of the disease. He hopes to replicate the findings in further research and learn more about the mechanisms causing the difference.