NYTimes | Even before Ronald Reagan
became the oldest elected president, his mental state was a political
issue. His adversaries often suggested his penchant for contradictory
statements, forgetting names and seeming absent-mindedness could be
linked to dementia.
In 1980, Mr. Reagan told me that he would resign the presidency if White House doctors found him mentally unfit. Years later, those doctors and key aides told me they had not detected any changes in his mental abilities while in office.
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.
