The professors digitized 14 Christie novels (and included two more available in the Gutenberg online text archive), and then, with the aid of textual-analysis software, analyzed them for “vocabulary size and richness,” an increase in repeated phrases (like “all sorts of”) and an uptick in indefinite words (“anything,” “something”) — linguistic indicators of the cognitive deficits typical of Alzheimer’s disease. The results were statistically significant; Christie’s lexicon decreased with age, while both the number of vague words she employed and phrases she repeated increased.

Further studies are planned for the works of P.D. James and Ross Macdonald.

Link, via Language Log, where there is an informed comment thread.

When her mother started to show symptoms of dementia because of Alzheimer’s, Penny Garner never imagined that she would one day spearhead a radical new way to treat people with dementia.

In dementia, patients have lost their ability to learn new things. For example, they might not know the current day of the week, or even where they presently are.

The most common response we have to this would be to correct the patients’ mistake. If they are at a park, but believe they are in the ocean, we’d say: "No, you’re at a park." This often causes agitation, embarrassment and other negative emotions.

Penny thought of a different way to help:

In many ways Specal is an unlikely therapy. It’s creator may be extremely bright, charismatic and intuitive, but she is also a Cotswolds granny in her mid-sixties who has no medical or nursing qualifications, just the confidence to make up her own rules based on 30 years of working with people who have dementia.

And Specal can seem counterintuitive. Conventional logic may tell us to try to orientate a person who has dementia by reminding them that today is Monday and they have forgotten to do something. Much better not to challenge them, Penny suggests. Instead bypass what they can’t remember and tune in to their long-term memory, which is still functioning as brain scans have proved, and use that to make emotional connections that enable them to make sense of the present.

“They haven’t lost their ability to reason, they’ve lost the information that other people around them are using to reason with,” she says. “But they do have some substitute stuff in their memory. My mother could recall stacks of stuff and when she did that she was confident. She would make an intelligent match between what she saw and old facts. Sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, she would think she was at an airport and ask if our flight had been called. If I said, ‘Not yet’, she was happy.

Link – via TimesOnline

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Silver.

Are cave paintings signs of intelligence of ancient cave dwellers or are they just scribbles of crazy cavemen?

Take a look at the two photos above. The one to the left is a painting made by a patient at St. Elizabeth’s hospital. The patient had a case of dementia praecox (eventually classified as schizophrenia) and used a pin or fingernail to scratch paint from the wall, creating pictures symbolizing past events in the patient’s life and represent a mild state of mental regression.

Jeb of Modcult made this intriguing observation:

You know, everyone assumes cave paintings were made for some sort of vaunted religious or technical purpose, but maybe in olden times they just sent their crazy people into a cave. I mean, that’s basically what we do now.

Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival

Long working hours may raise the risk of mental decline and possibly dementia, research suggests.

The Finnish-led study was based on analysis of 2,214 middle-aged British civil servants.

It found that those working more than 55 hours a week had poorer mental skills than those who worked a standard working week.

The American Journal of Epidemiology study found hard workers had problems with short-term memory and word recall.

Link

Do you have trouble finding your keys?  Can’t remember names and faces? 

The BBC News reports on a study to be presented to the American Academy of Neurology that concludes that people who keep themselves mentally active between the ages of 50 and 65 have a better chance of delaying the onset of dementia than people who watch television. 

Reading, crossword puzzles, knitting, quilting are all activities that keep your brain active.

Spending a significant amount of time watching television, researchers found, may actually speed up memory loss.  So if you knit, turn off the TV.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.