The Language Changes That Separate Normal Ageing From Dementia

Comment provided by cognitive neuroscientist Dr Adolfo M García, Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Centre, Atlantic Fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute, and Associate Researcher at Universidad de Santiago de Chile. He is also the creator of the speech testing app TELL.

Sometimes, dementia changes how people speak. Because it can affect the part of the brain responsible for language, it may mean those with the condition struggle to finish a sentence, replace an intended word with another one, or jumble up their words.

But writing in Nature recently, cognitive neuroscientist Dr Adolfo M García said that while some language changes are normal in “healthy” ageing, others might signal dementia risk before it is clinically recognised.

Speaking to HuffPost UK,...