We taped this last week and just got around to watching it. I'm sure PBS will recycle it and it's worth the effort to catch it.
This is probably a very sensitive subject with anyone who's lost a loved one to Alzheimer's or is coping with it. I've lost a grandfather to senile dementia but I can't imagine the pain of dealing with Alzheimer's. Before the jokesters come crawling out of the woodwork, let me say that one of the ways I deal with my concerns about topics like this is to write about them and learn from other posters. I'm trying to share, not to score a punch line.
As most of you probably already know, researchers have figured out that the brains of Alzheimer's patients are messed up by the accumulation of plaque. First to go is the process of converting short-term memory to long-term storage (the hippocampus) followed by cognitive & voluntary processes. Eventually involuntary processes are affected, the brain no longer functions, and the body dies. This can take between 8-20 years. One school of thought is that at least 40% of us have or will develop Alzheimer's and that awareness is based on longer human lifespans and better detection methods. The problem is that there's not a cheap, reliable, widely-accredited physical method for detecting the presence of this plaque or the probability of acquiring it. Right now the best physical detection method is an autopsy.
Other researchers are trying to determine exactly what skills are affected by Alzheimer's so that they can develop diagnostic cognitive tests. This approach has been somewhat more successful but is still subjective & quite controversial. No one wants to make life-threatening decisions based on a series of pass/fail interviews. I think the malpractice-insurance industry is alarmed by the ideas coming from this area of research.
Some people can never remember stuff and others can never forget it. By the time you're entering your 50s you've probably figured out how to index the information that you need and how to access stuff that you'd like to know, and it has a lot to do with whether you can recall things by yourself or whether you need external reminders to trigger your memory. Those differences in memory storage/access can greatly confuse the process of determining whether Alzheimer's is creeping up on a person. For example my parents-in-law joke about "senior moments" involving their reading glasses or their car keys or the 1952 Democratic vice-presidential nominee. I can effortlessly remember & spew literally dozens of phone numbers while my spouse has learned to keep old college texts & notebooks to help recall the specifics of general topics that just don't stay in her cerebral cortex. The documentary points out that these variances are more an issue of memory organization & access and don't have anything to do with Alzheimer's.
The one common factor that's been identified by the cognitive researchers is the ability to spell a word backwards. (Just stay with me for another paragraph.) No one "knows" why this works. It's just been identified as an analytical skill (breaking down a word, reorganizing it, spitting it back out) that is lost by early-stage Alzheimer's patients. Of course you have to know how the word is spelled and you're not allowed to write it down in front of you before reading it backwards, but that's the leading indicator. It's crossed over from research to diagnosis.
If a doctor asks you your full first name and then asks you to spell it backwards, he's running a test. If you can do it, you pass. If you can't do it, you're not just having a stressful senior moment on a bad day-- you're struggling to use a former skill that's been destroyed by Alzheimer's plaques.
OTOH if your spouse is holding something behind her back in her shooting hand and asks you to spell onomatopoeia backwards, that's probably not a valid test but rather a prelude to a felony. Once the word on this diagnostic test gets out, I predict that soon millions of medical directives & powers of attorney will need an urgent update.
I'd be interested to hear from others who have seen the documentary or have some experience with this test...
This is probably a very sensitive subject with anyone who's lost a loved one to Alzheimer's or is coping with it. I've lost a grandfather to senile dementia but I can't imagine the pain of dealing with Alzheimer's. Before the jokesters come crawling out of the woodwork, let me say that one of the ways I deal with my concerns about topics like this is to write about them and learn from other posters. I'm trying to share, not to score a punch line.
As most of you probably already know, researchers have figured out that the brains of Alzheimer's patients are messed up by the accumulation of plaque. First to go is the process of converting short-term memory to long-term storage (the hippocampus) followed by cognitive & voluntary processes. Eventually involuntary processes are affected, the brain no longer functions, and the body dies. This can take between 8-20 years. One school of thought is that at least 40% of us have or will develop Alzheimer's and that awareness is based on longer human lifespans and better detection methods. The problem is that there's not a cheap, reliable, widely-accredited physical method for detecting the presence of this plaque or the probability of acquiring it. Right now the best physical detection method is an autopsy.
Other researchers are trying to determine exactly what skills are affected by Alzheimer's so that they can develop diagnostic cognitive tests. This approach has been somewhat more successful but is still subjective & quite controversial. No one wants to make life-threatening decisions based on a series of pass/fail interviews. I think the malpractice-insurance industry is alarmed by the ideas coming from this area of research.
Some people can never remember stuff and others can never forget it. By the time you're entering your 50s you've probably figured out how to index the information that you need and how to access stuff that you'd like to know, and it has a lot to do with whether you can recall things by yourself or whether you need external reminders to trigger your memory. Those differences in memory storage/access can greatly confuse the process of determining whether Alzheimer's is creeping up on a person. For example my parents-in-law joke about "senior moments" involving their reading glasses or their car keys or the 1952 Democratic vice-presidential nominee. I can effortlessly remember & spew literally dozens of phone numbers while my spouse has learned to keep old college texts & notebooks to help recall the specifics of general topics that just don't stay in her cerebral cortex. The documentary points out that these variances are more an issue of memory organization & access and don't have anything to do with Alzheimer's.
The one common factor that's been identified by the cognitive researchers is the ability to spell a word backwards. (Just stay with me for another paragraph.) No one "knows" why this works. It's just been identified as an analytical skill (breaking down a word, reorganizing it, spitting it back out) that is lost by early-stage Alzheimer's patients. Of course you have to know how the word is spelled and you're not allowed to write it down in front of you before reading it backwards, but that's the leading indicator. It's crossed over from research to diagnosis.
If a doctor asks you your full first name and then asks you to spell it backwards, he's running a test. If you can do it, you pass. If you can't do it, you're not just having a stressful senior moment on a bad day-- you're struggling to use a former skill that's been destroyed by Alzheimer's plaques.
OTOH if your spouse is holding something behind her back in her shooting hand and asks you to spell onomatopoeia backwards, that's probably not a valid test but rather a prelude to a felony. Once the word on this diagnostic test gets out, I predict that soon millions of medical directives & powers of attorney will need an urgent update.
I'd be interested to hear from others who have seen the documentary or have some experience with this test...
