Having considered attempts at coming up with a Pratchettian title and theme for this post, I decided to belay that notion out of respect for the master. The article below has reminded me to return to Discworld for some spiritual refreshment.
The investigation it describes could be seen as somewhat ghoulish but generally for a good cause. Appropriate I think, if you know his writing, and Sir Terry might approve. Having experienced dementia as a caregiver I pay attention to developments in the field anyway but it was Pratchett's name that caught my eye.
This could have gone in the Brain thread in honor of
Dr. xSilverPhinx's recent visit, but Pratchett deserves his own thread every time. :thumb:
"Terry Pratchett's novels may have held clues to his dementia a decade before diagnosis, our new study suggests" |
The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/terry-pratchetts-novels-may-have-held-clues-to-his-dementia-a-decade-before-diagnosis-our-new-study-suggests-273777)
QuoteThe earliest signs of dementia are rarely dramatic. They do not arrive as forgotten names or misplaced keys, but as changes so subtle they are almost impossible to notice: a slightly narrower vocabulary, less variation in description, a gentle flattening of language.
New research my colleagues and I conducted suggests that these changes may be detectable years before a formal diagnosis — and one of the clearest examples may lie hidden in the novels of Sir Terry Pratchett.
Pratchett is remembered as one of Britain's most imaginative writers, the creator of the Discworld series and a master of satire whose work combined humour with sharp moral insight. Following his diagnosis of posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer's disease, he became a powerful advocate for dementia research and awareness. Less well known is that the early effects of the disease may already have been present in his writing long before he knew he was ill.
Dementia is often described as a condition of memory loss, but this is only part of the story. In its earliest stages, dementia can affect attention, perception and language before memory problems become obvious. These early changes are difficult to detect because they are gradual and easily mistaken for stress, ageing or normal variation in behaviour.
Language, however, offers a unique window into cognitive change. The words we choose, the variety of our vocabulary and the way we structure description are tightly linked to brain function. Even small shifts in language use may reflect underlying neurological change.
In our recent study, we analysed the language used across Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, examining how his writing evolved over time. We focused on "lexical diversity" — a measure of how varied an author's word choices are — and paid particular attention to adjectives, the descriptive words that give prose its texture, colour and emotional depth.
Across Pratchett's later novels, there was a clear and statistically significant decline in the diversity of adjectives he used. The richness of descriptive language gradually narrowed. This was not something a reader would necessarily notice, nor did it reflect a sudden deterioration in quality. Instead, it was a subtle, progressive change detectable only through detailed linguistic analysis.
Crucially, the first significant drop appeared in The Last Continent, published almost ten years before Pratchett received his formal diagnosis. This suggests that the "preclinical phase" of dementia — the period during which disease-related changes are already occurring in the brain — may have begun many years earlier, without obvious outward symptoms.
[Continues . . . (https://theconversation.com/terry-pratchetts-novels-may-have-held-clues-to-his-dementia-a-decade-before-diagnosis-our-new-study-suggests-273777)]
The paper is open access:
"Detecting Dementia Using Lexical Analysis: Terry Pratchett's Discworld Tells a More Personal Story" |
Brain Sciences (https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/16/1/94)
QuoteAbstract:
Background/Objectives: Dementia, characterised by cognitive decline, significantly impacts language abilities. While the risk of dementia increases with age, it often manifests years before clinical diagnosis. Identifying early warning signs is crucial for timely intervention. Previous research has demonstrated that changes in language, such as reduced vocabulary diversity and simpler sentence structures, may be observed in individuals with dementia.
This study investigates the potential of linguistic analysis to detect early signs of cognitive decline by examining the writing of Sir Terry Pratchett, a renowned author diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA), typically a form of dementia caused by Alzheimer's disease.
Methods: This study analysed 33 Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, comparing linguistic features before and after a potential turning point identified through analysis of adjective type-token ratios (TTR).
Results: A significant decrease in lexical diversity (TTR) was observed for nouns and adjectives in later works. Total wordcount increased, while lexical diversity decreased, suggesting a shift towards simpler language. This shift coincided with a decrease in adjective TTR below a defined threshold, occurring approximately ten years before Pratchett's formal diagnosis.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that subtle changes in linguistic patterns, such as decreased lexical diversity, may precede clinical diagnosis of dementia by a considerable margin. This research highlights the potential of linguistic analysis as a valuable tool for early detection of cognitive decline. Further research is needed to validate these findings in larger cohorts and explore the specific linguistic markers associated with different types of dementia.
I didn't find out about Pratchett until about 8 years ago. I read a lot if sci fi and fantasy, so I'm not sure how that happened. I really enjoy his writing.
Watching my MiL slide into dementia was painful. It's fascinating what I've been reading in science news these days, in terms of treatment. There's a lot of bleeding edge tech. I mentioned to my doctor that I feel myself slipping. I don't want to develop dementia. Most of said degradation came from sleeping in a recliner for a year because of reflux. I now have a bed that the head and foot portions rise, like a hospital bed. I sleep better.