Is there a connection between memory and speech?

CrowdScience

BBC

Science, Technology

4.8 • 985 Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

CrowdScience listener Nyankami, from Kenya, has a friend with dementia. Despite memory loss and no longer knowing his way around, his friend has no problem communicating. So what’s the connection between memory and language?

Caroline Steel discovers how dementia affects our speech. In most cases the illness does have an impact on our ability to speak but it can depend on many factors, including the type of dementia and even how many languages we speak.

She meets George Rook, diagnosed with vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s, who’s a passionate campaigner for people with dementia and talks to dementia nurse Helen Green, who explains how the illness can affect our behaviour.

She discovers that speaking more than one language can actually protect our brains from decline and finds out about cutting edge research that is helping people with dementia to improve their memory and capacity to speak.

Featuring: George Rook, Lived Experience Advisory Panel, Dementia UK Helen Green, Admiral Nurse, specialising in dementia Professor Alex Leff, Professor of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology, University College London Professor Guillaume Thierry, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bangor University Professor Yan Jing Wu, Professor of Neurolinguistics, Ningbo University, China Dr Elizabeth Kuhn, Post-Doctoral Fellow, German Centre for Neurodegenerative Disease, Bonn

Image Credit: Emma Innocenti

Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Richard Collings Production co-ordinator: Jonathan Harris Sound engineer: Jackie Margerum

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of
0:07.0	Happiness Podcast.
0:08.0	For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want
0:14.4	to share that science with you.
0:16.1	And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley.
0:19.4	I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that
0:25.4	calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.3	Hi I'm Isie Green Build from Business Daily.
0:34.0	We bring you important and interesting stories from the world of money and work,
0:38.0	and we've been taking a deep dive into the music industry.
0:41.0	It's worth $26 billion a a year globally and I've spoken to
0:44.8	industry experts from around the world from international pop stars and gospel groups to
0:49.4	aspiring local artists to find out what it takes to make it in such a lucrative but
0:54.4	exclusive industry. That's Business Daily from the BBC World Service.
0:58.3	Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Those curious sounds are vowels in Mandarin being played forwards and then backwards.
1:28.8	Scientists played them to newborn babies to try and work out when we start learning to talk.
1:36.3	I'm Caroline Steele and this is what we're exploring today on crowd signs,
1:40.0	language, as we answer a question from listener Nayan Kami in Kenya.
1:45.1	My question to crowd science is this. There is a friend of mine. He suffers from Alzheimer's.
1:49.7	This old man, sometimes he gets out of the house, walks away and totally forgets where he is unless
1:56.7	somebody looks for him.
1:59.0	But in the process of coming back home, he will say, for example, I'm hungry. I want a banana. I want something to eat. I am thirsty. I want some water.
	...

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