I asked Dr. James Grisolia, a neurologist at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, about a plotline on last week's episode of "Grey's Anatomy," in which a woman with severe Alzheimer's disease suddenly seemed to recover. Her mental faculties all returned (and her memory of events from years earlier), but only for a short time.
Does that actually ever happen?
Senile patients "sometimes have lucid moments when suddenly everything seems to connect, Grisolia said. "They don't typically do very well on recent memories, but they suddenly seem to respond better to questions and can sound more lucid about past events, although they often sound more accurate than they really are.
"Such moments are brief, and might last the length of a TV show, but not a day or two. The ups and downs are often explained by controlling other medical conditions. But some are just unexplained gifts which are treasured by their loved ones long afterwards."
While it has nothing to do with the TV show, I also asked Grisolia if it's true that people's personalities often remain steady even when they have severe Alzheimer's disease or related illnesses. Do sunny people remain sunny, while angry people stay angry?
His response: "People's overall personality structure often stays pretty intact… however, once [deterioration] hits the areas controlling emotional behavior, mostly in the frontal lobes, people can become paranoid and suspicious or apathetic and withdrawn."
