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Elisabeth, you wrote: > I do all the little tests, but they, like > neuropsych assessments (IQ tests) say very little about how I function in > the world. Whereas a tremor makes itself known by embarrassing both > its victim and observers. But I'll move on. > > What interests me in connection with the neuropsych literature > is the link between bradykinesia and bradyphrenia (a term I'd not heard > before). It realy is a very threatening subject you ask about. During my first time as a PWP I read about dementia as just an inevitable symptom of PD in several books. Going to meetings of the Dutch organisation of PWP's, I could see with my own eyes it was not that simple. I met a lot of people who where parkies for a long time but where evidently not demented. For myself I was not so sure, my life was turned upside down. It lasted a long time before I knew the right dosis of med's. I suffered from disturbed concentration. I could not read a book in another language than Dutch. With the passing of time however all turned more or less back to normal. I know my memory is not what it used to be. However, all people growing older feel the same. One diagnostic sign of dementia is the impossibility to learn something new. Just three years ago we planned a holiday in Turkey. I have always tried to learn a few hundreds words of the language of the countries we visited. In this case it was a double challenge because Turkish not a language of the Indo-European language-family. But I could do it. It did cost more repetition than I would have needed before. But having done so the words remained in my brain. I have looked for literature about this topic. I found just one thing. It consists of preliminary unpublished results of a study of the departement of neuropsychology of the University of Amsterdam. They found the following disturbances in PWP's: - disturbances in spatial orientation. - disturbances in rote-learning. This became more difficult, more time-consuming, but results were of the same quality and perseverance as in normals. So it may be true that Alzheimer dementia has a higher frequency in PWP's than in normals, but it seems that the "dementia" that is usually seen in Parkinson is from a different and less threatening type. Regards, Ida Kamphuis, 52/12