One of the most devastating symptoms of is the progressive loss of language. Patients begin speaking in short, simple sentences, then phrases, then single words. Finally they fall mute. In a report last February, researchers turned up the alarming possibility that this erosion of language and memory may begin far sooner than anyone has ever suspected. Epidemiologist David Snowdon and his colleagues at the University of Kentucky in Lexington found that a simple, list-like writing style among young women was a good indication that they would some 60 years later.
Snowdon and his colleagues studied 93 members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, a congregation in Milwaukee. The nuns, aged 75 to 96, were all well educated; most were retired teachers. Luckily for Snowdon, they had all been required to write brief autobiographical sketches on entering the convent in their early 20s. He had a linguist rate each sample ...
