Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a type of dementia that typically occurs in adults aged 40-65. As an early detection test, researchers asked 30 people with PPA and 27 healthy participants to recognize and name a series of 20 famous faces—including JFK, Princess Diana, and Elvis Presley. The dementia-free group recognized the faces with 97% accuracy and named them 93% of the time. But those with PPA scored an average of 79% on the recognition test and 46% on the naming portion. You wouldn’t think to flag it as dementia in its early stages—the memory is usually still intact—but PPA is a progressive destruction of a person’s language abilities, including the ability to name an object, comprehend a paragraph, and the ability write. And the discrepancy between whether the dementia is inhibiting your ability to recognize or put a name to a face is crucial. “This distinction reflects differences in the location of where brain tissue loss occurs,” says Tamar Gefen, doctoral candidate in clinical neuropsychology at The Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and author of the study published in Neurology. In the study, face-naming difficulties were related to tissue loss in the left temporal part of the brain, while face recognition issues were related to tissue loss in both the left and the right temporal brain regions. Currently, there is no cure for PPA. But Gefen says locating where the cognitive deficit is coming from is an important first step. “Identifying the locus of the impairment at the earliest stages of the disease is beneficial for appropriate medication, emotional and social support, and planning,” she says. Something else the study proved: famous faces are a good universal test for early recognition. “We hope that this tool can be used for younger patients who complain of difficulty naming a once-familiar face, like a celebrity or a loved one,” she says. More from Prevention: What Can Make Your Brain Fuzzy What Makes You 60% More Likely To Get Alzheimer’s A New Memory Booster
