Long-winded speech could be an early sign of Alzheimer's disease, according to research that suggests slight changes in speech style occur years before the more serious mental decline takes hold.
Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Janet Cohen Sherman,clinical director of the Psychology Assessment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, listed new findings that revealed distinctive language problems in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
“Many of the studies so far have looked at changes in memory, but we also know changes occur in language”, she said.
Sherman cites studies of the vocabulary in Iris Murdoch's later works, which showed signs of Alzheimer’s years before her diagnosis. Another study, based on White House press conference transcripts, found striking changes in Ronald Reagan's speech over the course of his presidency, while George HW Bush, who was a similar age when president, showed no such decline.
“Ronald Reagan started to have a decline in the number of unique words with repetitions of statements over time,” said Sherman. “He started using more fillers, more empty phrases, like thing, or 'something' or things like ‘basically’ or ‘actually or well’.”
Sherman and her colleagues had initially set out to test the “regression hypothesis”, the idea that language is lost in a reverse direction to how it was acquired during childhood, with long and difficult vocabulary being the first thing to go.
The hypothesis turned out to be wrong, but the team did find that Alzheimer’s comes with characteristic language problems. In a study, the scientists compared the language abilities of 22 healthy young individuals, 24 healthy older individuals and 22 people with MCI.
When given an exercise in which they had to join up three words, for instance “pen”, “ink” and “paper”, the healthy volunteers typically joined the three in a simple sentence, while the MCI group gave more complex accounts of going to the shop and buying a pen.
“The sentences they produced were much longer, they had a hard time staying on point and I guess you could say they were much more roundabout in making their point understood, said Sherman. “ It was a very significant difference.”
The prospect of an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s has had knockbacks the past year as drugs have each been shown to make no difference to the rate of cognitive decline in trials. Between 2002 and 2012, 99.6% of drugs studies aimed at preventing, curing or improving Alzheimer’s symptoms were discontinued.
Some believe that these failures may be, in part, because by the time Alzheimer's is diagnosed, the disease has already caused irreparable damage to the brain, making it too late for treatment to help. “So we are trying to push the detection period back to the very slight, early changes in Alzheimer’s disease. “said Sherman.
43. What did Janet Cohen Sherman and her team find in their research?
A.Mild cognitive impairment is caused by failing language abilities in most cases. |
B.Memory decline is a major sign of Alzheimer’s and should be paid attention to. |
C.People with Alzheimer’s may show a change in speech style at an early stage. |
D.People can avoid MCI by making long-winded speech short and meaningful. |
44. According to the passage, Ronald Reagan ________.
A.made more powerful speeches than George HW Bush |
B.relied on empty phrases to avoid any potential conflict |
C.used more inaccurate words in speech over time when president |
D.had a decline in the number of repetitions of statements in his later life |
45. What can be concluded from MCI group's performance in the word-joining exercise?
A.They had difficulty in making clear their meaning briefly. |
B.They failed to tell the difference between different accounts. |
C.They would like to ask their audience to guess what they meant. |
D.They tended to think a lot before coming up with a suitable sentence. |
46. What can be inferred from the passage?
A.Most previous drugs are no longer on the market because of their side effects. |
B.The findings of Sherman's research may lead to effective treatment of Alzheimer’s. |
C.The”regression hypothesis”proved to be partially true,especially with MCI people. |
D.Mental decline doesn’t always happen before people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. |