From: hound23x@gmail.com   
      
   How do you spot Alzheimer's? Neuroscientist, author behind 'Still Alice'   
   explains   
   BY RUTH TAM  February 10, 2015 at 12:14 PM EST   
      
   "Still Alice" author Lisa Genova, who has her PhD. in neuroscience, writes   
   about families coping with neurological diseases or disorders, which she says   
   are often "ignored, feared or misunderstood." Watch her interview with Jeffrey   
   Brown on tonight's PBS    
   NewsHour.   
      
   In Lisa Genova's bestselling novel "Still Alice," a linguist with early-onset   
   Alzheimer's navigates her symptoms with her husband and three adult children.   
   The book has raised awareness about the disease and its film adaptation is   
   getting its own    
   spotlight during this year's Oscar season.   
      
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   But Alzheimer's disease, which affects 5 million Americans and their families,   
   still has no known cure. Genova, who is also a neuroscientist, joined Jeffrey   
   Brown to discuss the disease's symptoms and how different people react to them.   
   Here is an excerpt from their conversation. Watch more with Genova on   
   tonight's PBS NewsHour.   
      
   Jeffrey Brown: How do you recognize the symptoms of someone with Alzheimer's,   
   someone around you? And what do you do?   
      
   Lisa Genova: Okay, well this is what everyone's terrified of, right? Because   
   you've probably within the last day or two, walked into a room and thought   
   "Why did I come in here?" or "Where are my keys?" or "Oh, what's his name?" So   
   that tip of the tongue "   
   Oh, what's his name?" The average 25-year-old experiences that three to four   
   times a week and that does increase as we age. And yet with Alzheimer's, it's   
   something slightly different.   
      
   Most of us, when we can't find our keys, it actually isn't a memory problem,   
   it's an attention problem. You're doing five things at once and you never   
   actually paid attention to where you put them in the first place.So the signs   
   are like, you can't    
   remember the name, and then you don't have the first letter, you don't have   
   the number of syllables. It doesn't then just pop into your head an hour while   
   you're driving down the street. It's not going to come on the tip of your   
   tongue ever. Keys, you    
   can't find the keys and when you do, you don't remember what they're for. Or   
   you find them and they're in the refrigerator or somewhere strange.   
   Most of us, when we can't find our keys, it actually isn't a memory problem,   
   it's an attention problem. You're doing five things at once and you never   
   actually paid attention to where you put them in the first place. So you start   
   experiencing memory    
   impairments that's really drastically different from the kinds of memory   
   impairments than the kinds we're used to. And you recognize that.   
      
   Jeffrey Brown: Is there any point where you say to yourself, "Now I must go   
   see a doctor or get tested?" What did you find?   
      
   Lisa Genova: Well for everyone, it's different. A lot of the people that I met   
   with early onset who were like Alice, knowing you're lost in a place that   
   looks familiar. This is a place I've been to a hundred times or a thousand   
   times or my whole life.   
      
   And the words just drop out. Something that's so out of the norm for you, is   
   usually when the conversation starts to get real. And for someone young, it's   
   usually not a straight and narrow path to diagnosis because there are other   
   things that can cause    
   dementia and memory impairment and cognitive problems and you want to rule   
   those treatable causes out first.   
      
   Jeffrey Brown: And what about family members seeing someone or watching   
   someone? What did people tell you that you talked to? And what did you see   
   yourself?   
      
   Lisa Genova: You know, surprisingly, for the people that I know with   
   Alzheimer's, it was usually the people themselves with Alzheimer's that drove   
   the decision to get an answer before other people.   
      
   Jeffrey Brown: Really?   
      
   Lisa Genova: I think this is such a hard thing to face. Internally, you know   
   what's going on better than anyone else. I know that my grandmother probably   
   knew that she had Alzheimer's before we did. She was just... she wasn't a   
   complainer. And she was    
   tough and very intellectually agile. So she moved around her symptoms in very   
   sort of creative ways for a long time.   
      
   I think people surrounding someone with Alzheimer's, the people I've seen and   
   had experience with, don't push the process forward. They're happier to   
   retreat and be in denial or look the other way. No one wants this to happen to   
   anyone that they love.   
      
   Brown also talked to Genova on what inspires her fiction.   
      
   Jeffrey Brown: You've continued writing other works that pick up on the theme   
   of understanding disease and what's happening around us in our lives through   
   fiction.   
      
   Lisa Genova: Yeah, so my training's in neuroscience, which is kind of a   
   bizarre thing for a novelist. So I'm using that and it's absolutely what I   
   care about and am passionate about. So I write stories that are accessible,   
   about people living with    
   neurological diseases or disorders that are ignored, feared or misunderstood.   
      
   Jeffrey Brown: And now what's the latest project?   
      
   The cover art for Lisa Genova's fourth book, "Inside the O'Briens." The book,   
   which comes out in April, tells the story of a family dealing with   
   Huntington's disease.   
   Lisa Genova's fourth book, "Inside the O'Briens," comes out in April.   
      
   Lisa Genova: The book that's coming out in April is called "Inside the   
   O'Briens." It's about a blue collar, Irish Catholic family from Charlestown,   
   Massachusetts, dealing with Huntington's Disease. So Huntington's is a   
   neurodegenerative disease. It's 100    
   percent genetic, so if mom or dad have it, each kid has a fifty-fifty shot of   
   getting it. I was 22 years old in a neuroscience lab in the Charlestown Navy   
   Yard when the lab down the hall in February of '93 when all these nerdy   
   neuroscientists start    
   screaming and yelling and celebrating. They had just isolated the genetic   
   mutation that causes Huntington's Disease.   
   Jeffrey Brown: Wow.   
      
      
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