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MANAGEMENT OF KNOWLEGDE IN ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE

A new study published in Neuropsychology suggests that patients with AD seem to have trouble determining which pieces of information are more important than others. The researchers, led by Alan D. Castel of the University of California, Los Angeles, based their conclusions on a study of 109 people with an average age of 75. Some were in early stages of Alzheimer's, while others were cognitively healthy. Selecting what is important to remember, attending to this information, and then later recalling it can be thought of in terms of the strategic control of attention and the efficient use of memory. To examine whether aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) influenced this ability, the present study used a selectivity task, where the volunteers were asked to memorize a series of words, each of which had a point value associated with it. The higher the value of the word, they were told, the more important it was to remember it. The researchers said it might be that in early Alzheimer's the brain was already becoming less efficient at learning and memorizing. They added that it might be possible to train patients to improve their memory strategies.

New evidence suggests that in Alzheimer's Disease part of the initial impairment lies in attentional control (see Balota & Faust, 2001, and Perry & Hodges, 1999) and it can lead to impairments in:

(1) Enconding and maintaining relevant information in Working Memory
(2) Inhibitory control
(3) Retrieval and response control

According to this study, the ability to selectively encode information is likely dependent on several possibly interrelated abilities, including inhibitory control, working memory capacity, monitoring, and metacognitive control related to using performance on previous trials to update resource allocation strategies. Although previous research has widely documented impairments in memory in old age and AD, the present study shows that AD is also associated with a specific deficit in being selective and strategic about encoding operations, which likely contributes to their poorer memory efficiency.

Personally, I think that the results of this study are very interesting to gain an insight also into the nature of communication impairments in Alzheimer. Both, memory-attention and communication deficits are interconnected, so that, I am focusing my thesis project on how persons with AD manage knowledge in talk. I consider that, at the same time, it should be appropriated to carry out new studies on that issue but beyond the word-level and well-controlled experimental environments. That is, research with ecological validity into how persons with AD communicate and interact with their interlocutors in real world-settings are needed in order to comprehend how these strategies for knowledge management are set and which their real deficits in communication, memory and attention are.

Journal reference:

Alan D. Castel, David A. Balota, and David P. McCabe. Memory Efficiency and the Strategic Control of Attention at Encoding: Impairments of Value-Directed Remembering in Alzheimer's Disease. Neuropsychology, Vol. 23, No. 3

LINGUISTIC STUDY OF AGATHA CHRISTIE'S BOOKS CLAIMS SHE HAD ALZHEIMER

An in-depth analysis of Agatha Christie's novels has suggested that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Academics at the University of Toronto studied a selection of Christie's novels written between the ages of 28 and 82, counting the numbers of different words, indefinite nouns and phrases used in each. They found that the vocabulary size decreased sharply, while repetition of phrases and indefinite word usage (something, thing, anything) in her novels increased significantly. "These language effects are recognised as symptoms of memory difficulties associated with Alzheimer's disease" said Dr Ian Lancashire from the English department and computer scientist Dr Graeme Hirst.

Although Christie, whose books have sold over two billion copies worldwide, was never diagnosed with dementia, the authors of the study conclude that the changes in her writing are consistent not with normal ageing, but with Alzheimer's disease. The Canadian study supports a 2004 comparison of two early works by Iris Murdoch with her last novel, Jackson's Dilemma, which concluded that textual analysis could be used to detect the onset of dementia before anyone [has] the remotest suspicion of any untoward intellectual decline".Jackson's Dilemma was published in 1995 to a poor critical reception, and Murdoch was found to have Alzheimer's the following year. Scientists from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London compared it to earlier works Under the Net and The Sea, The Sea, and found that her vocabulary had worsened in the final work, which contained fewer words and clauses per sentence on average.
Lancashire and Hirst are now continuing and extending their study, looking into changes in Christie's use of passive verbs and the decline in her syntactic complexity. They also want to compare her writing with the work of a contemporary for whom dementia is not suspected.

Source: guardian.co.uk at 13.53 BST on Friday 3 April 2009

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS AND MENTAL FUNCTIONING

Spending just 10 minutes talking to another person can help improve your memory and your performance on tests, according to a University of Michigan study."In our study, socializing was just as effective as more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance," said Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and a lead author of the study with ISR psychologist Eugene Burnstein and psychologist Piotr Winkielman from the University of California, San Diego.
This experiment shows that social interaction directly affects memory and mental performance in a positive way and it suggests that social isolation may have a negative effect on intellectual abilities as well as emotional well-being.

About the research

COMMUNICATION AND KNOWLEDGE

Discourse processing certainly represents an aspect of verbal communication that will allow bridge between more classically language-related aspects of cognition and other aspects of cognition that are not exclusive to language but nonetheless allow optimal interpersonal communication abilities. Studying discourse together with other disciplines could help us to understand different aspects which take part in communication processes and could be impaired in Alzheimer communication: how we perceive the world, remember things, comprehend social and linguistic events, and act effectively to satisfy one's needs.

Studies in discourse impairments in brain-damaged individuals should systematically incorporate an appreciation of all cognitive abilities that are necessary in order to achieve normal interpersonal communication (working memory, semantic memory, attention, inferential abilities, visual skills...) Also these studies should propose approaches that enable capturing inter and intra subject variability.

The major issue between persons living with AD and the people who interact with them is communication. We need to really listen, to make sure that we understand and are understood.

How people acquire and represent knowledge about their world, how they organize and use that knowledge, how they use language in speaking. This is a complex cognitive skill. So that, the management of knowledge is a complex cognitive skill and I suggest to focus the study of Alzheimer discourse on that issue: Which is the rol of knowledge in dicourse production and comprehension?

ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE: ADVANCES AND CHALLENGES

One of the most frightening and devastating of all neurological disorders is the dementia that occurs in the elderly. The most common cause of this illness is Alzheimer’s disease (AD). World over it is estimated that 26 million people are living with Alzheimer's and by 2050 the number is expected to quadruple.

The earliest symptoms of AD include forgetfulness; disorientation to time or place; and difficulty with concentration, calculation, language, and judgment. As the disease progresses, some patients have severe behavioral disturbances and may even become psychotic. The diagnosis depends on medical history, physical and neurological examinations, psychological testing, laboratory tests, and brain imaging studies. At present, however, final confirmation of the diagnosis requires examination of brain tissue, usually obtained at autopsy. ate caution must be taken.

The causes and mechanisms of the brain abnormalities underlying AD are not yet fully understood. Reductions occur in levels of markers for many neurotransmitters, including acetylcholine, somatostatin, monoamines, and glutamate, that allow cells to communicate with one another. Damage to these neural systems, which are critical for attention, memory, language, learning, and higher cognitive abilities, is believed to cause the clinical symptoms. Currently approved treatments do not modify the course of the disease and offer only temporary mitigation of some symptoms of AD, such as agitation, anxiety, unpredictable behavior, sleep disturbances, and depression.

Within the past three to five years, greater appreciation has developed for the surprisingly important roles that diet and lifestyle play in determining risk for AD. Cognitive activity, physical activity, and heart-healthy diets lower the risk for AD, while obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes raise the risk. Some evidence indicates that successful management of these cardiovascular risks can delay the onset or
slow the progression of dementia.

Society for Neuroscience

2nd International Clinical Linguistic Conference

Madrid 2009
November 11,12,13

Main topics

* Clinical phonetics and phonology
* Clinical grammar
* Clinical linguistics and lexical-semantical aspects
* Clinical linguistics and pragmatics
* Clinical sociolinguistics
* Language acquisition and development, and Clinical Linguistics: L1 and L2
* New technologies for language acquisition and development in clinical situations
* Assessment, treatment, description of language disorders
* Brain and language

Abstract submission (oral presentations and posters): From October 1st. to April, 15th. 2009
Acceptance confirmation: April, 30th. 2009
Full text submission: June, 15th. 2009

Link: more information