"Alterations in speech one day might be used to predict development of Alzheimer’s."

Those of us who were not among the Gipper's ideological brethren have found it all too easy to blithely shrug and say we knew it all along. Of course, it's far deeper than that, and Donne's "no man is an island" hits closest to home.

As one enamored of words and writing, HL Mencken always has served as a sad and cautionary tale. The Sage of Baltimore suffered a stroke in 1948, leaving him (eventually) able to speak and communicate, but unable to write. A man who wrote millions of words lived eight years this way, often referring to himself in the past tense as dead already.

Pick a terror -- any terror: Mine is Mencken's fate, or Ronald Reagan's. Alzheimer's is nasty business indeed, and the thought that alterations in speaking patterns might serve as early warning is fascinating.

Parsing Ronald Reagan’s Words for Early Signs of Alzheimer’s, by Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. (New York Times)

... Now a clever new analysis has found that during his two terms in office, subtle changes in Mr. Reagan’s speaking patterns linked to the onset of dementia were apparent years before doctors diagnosed his Alzheimer’s disease in 1994.

The findings, published in The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease by researchers at Arizona State University, do not prove that Mr. Reagan exhibited signs of dementia that would have adversely affected his judgment and ability to make decisions in office.

But the research does suggest that alterations in speech one day might be used to predict development of Alzheimer’s and other neurological conditions years before symptoms are clinically perceptible.