Alzheimer's disease as a “trip back in time”

Abstract

Persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) seem to vary from day to day in their recall of loved ones' names and faces. Such erratic fluctuating and regressive cognition is often puzzling and stressful to caregivers. This paper explores the possibility of conceptualizing AD as a “trip back in time” to help caregivers understand the variation in an AD person's memory, behavior, and physical abilities. Clinical observations suggest that these individuals experience a cognitive, emotional, social, physical and functional regression with AD. The “trip back in time” paradigm uses aspects of Piaget's theory of adult development in reverse, Reisberg and associates FAST and GDS, and other cognitive, behavioral, and affective research on AD. Using past research to indicate how patients tend to lose many of their functions, the conceptualization goes further to advance a non-linear regression model of AD. This paradigm of AD as a “trip back in time” uses connecting loops spiraling downward to depict the fluctuating regression. Previous theoretical frameworks have tended to rely solely on fixed stage regression models of AD. The insight this model provides will hopefully increase gerontologist/caregivers' understanding and provide new ways to develop strategies to enhance future caregiving techniques.