What Words Can Say: Writing Test to Predict Alzheimer's

I enjoy writing. (She said, as if that’s not obvious to someone who is currently reading something I wrote.) Not only do I enjoy writing these pieces for you or writing articles for my job or my blog, but I enjoy physically taking a pen or a marker to paper and scribbling away.

If I was ever “bored” as a child, I’d just grab a piece of paper and a writing utensil and go to town (albeit not always neatly or grammatically correct). So when a New York Times piece titled “Alzheimer’s Prediction May Be Found in Writing Tests” flashed across my radar, I was doubly intrigued.

Summary of the research

The New York Times article details a study from IBM. Participants were in their 80s and there were fewer than 100 of them. Half of the group had Alzheimer’s, half did not.

Study participants took a writing test, prior to cognitive decline, in which they were asked to describe a drawing. Then, artificial intelligence developed by IBM examined the participants’ word usage to look for differences in language. The program identified patterns in sentence structure, such as the use of verbs, word usage, specifically repetition, and writing, such as capital letters, in a subset of study participants.

It was found that the writing test predicted those who would go on to develop Alzheimer’s years later with 75 percent accuracy.

Insert :::brain explosion emoji::: here

Cue the wandering eyes as I review this post for all of those things. I jest.

But, in all seriousness, this article struck me in so many ways, from my nerdy attraction to all things brain science since delving into Alzheimer’s advocacy to my natural state of writing stream of consciousness to pass the time.

It is just SO COOL that a computer program could crawl through what I write one day and, perhaps, trigger an intervention that could save my life and my memories. It’s truly mind-blowing, at least for me. (If I could, I would insert the brain explosion emoji here.)

Messages from loved ones

I found myself thinking about the bits of paper that I used to find with my Poppop’s handwriting on them, usually to-do or to-buy lists, like wood glue from Home Depot for example. His meticulous book-keeping endeavors that I used to watch eagerly over the shoulder of his armchair.

Also, there were the letter structure sheets that I’d watch him create for my cousins as he was trying to teach them how to write their names. They looked awfully like what I bought at the beginning of the pandemic to learn calligraphy, but free.

I wonder what scraps of paper, bits of language or mundane to-do list my loved ones will find when I’m gone. I personally hope it’s a beautifully crafted sentence worthy of a quote board, but I fear it might be my grocery list for Trader Joe’s.

Decoding our words

I have long studied language and words and how to put them together. I take a lot of pride in decoding the messages that authors give us in novels.

I am intrigued by this possibility of a whole new level of coded messages written within our words, that we may be able to unearth with the help of a computer.