Once Alzheimer’s starts, the damage it does to the victim’s brain appears to be permanent. The information appears to be gone. Once your memories start to get wiped away, I don’t think that there is any real way to get the information back, so whenever we do invent a cure for Alzheimer’s, all it is likely to do is to stop the deterioration of your brain, not bring your lost memories back. If we could start growing new neurons, you could probably get your brain functioning back to normal, but I doubt you could get much else.
Both my grandparents have Alzheimer’s, and the disease is at a rather late stage. They’re gone. They don’t remember me; they don’t remember my mother; they barely even recognize each other, and they’ve been married over 50 years. Even if I got my hands on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease tomorrow, they would “wake up” in 80+ year old bodies, with no memories of their children and grandchildren.
Given my own experience and knowledge of the disease, if I knew someone who had been diagnosed and was starting to show signs of the disease, I would recommend that they get themselves frozen as quickly as possible.
Do we know that for sure? I don’t know that much about Alzheimer’s in particular, but for other forms of dementia people frequently have periods where they are more lucid and can access memories and other periods where they are less functional. This would suggest that for at least some forms of dementia most of the actual memories are intact but inaccessible. Alzheimer’s does involve the direct destruction of synapses which suggests that the information has been completely removed in those synapses, but it is hard to tell how much information is being actually destroyed and how much is being rendered inaccessible.
Sometimes, yes. There are good days and bad days, mostly during the early stages of the disease. Alzheimer’s starts of looking just like other forms of dementia, but it gets consistently worse. At this point, there aren’t any good days. And brain scans do reveal that Alzheimer’s disease creates large scale destruction of synapses.
Upvoted for accuracy. My maternal grandmother is the same way and just the resulting politics in my mother’s family for how to deal with her empty shell are unpleasant, let alone the fact that she died so slowly hardly anyone acknowledged it as it was happening.
Once Alzheimer’s starts, the damage it does to the victim’s brain appears to be permanent. The information appears to be gone. Once your memories start to get wiped away, I don’t think that there is any real way to get the information back, so whenever we do invent a cure for Alzheimer’s, all it is likely to do is to stop the deterioration of your brain, not bring your lost memories back. If we could start growing new neurons, you could probably get your brain functioning back to normal, but I doubt you could get much else.
Both my grandparents have Alzheimer’s, and the disease is at a rather late stage. They’re gone. They don’t remember me; they don’t remember my mother; they barely even recognize each other, and they’ve been married over 50 years. Even if I got my hands on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease tomorrow, they would “wake up” in 80+ year old bodies, with no memories of their children and grandchildren.
Given my own experience and knowledge of the disease, if I knew someone who had been diagnosed and was starting to show signs of the disease, I would recommend that they get themselves frozen as quickly as possible.
Do we know that for sure? I don’t know that much about Alzheimer’s in particular, but for other forms of dementia people frequently have periods where they are more lucid and can access memories and other periods where they are less functional. This would suggest that for at least some forms of dementia most of the actual memories are intact but inaccessible. Alzheimer’s does involve the direct destruction of synapses which suggests that the information has been completely removed in those synapses, but it is hard to tell how much information is being actually destroyed and how much is being rendered inaccessible.
Sometimes, yes. There are good days and bad days, mostly during the early stages of the disease. Alzheimer’s starts of looking just like other forms of dementia, but it gets consistently worse. At this point, there aren’t any good days. And brain scans do reveal that Alzheimer’s disease creates large scale destruction of synapses.
I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve always said that Alzheimer’s is the last disease I’d ever want. It’s just… horrible.
Upvoted for accuracy. My maternal grandmother is the same way and just the resulting politics in my mother’s family for how to deal with her empty shell are unpleasant, let alone the fact that she died so slowly hardly anyone acknowledged it as it was happening.