MindWorks Over Matters

Here’s a mystery for you – what do Agatha Christie and a group of elderly American nuns have in common?

They all hold an intriguing clue about Alzheimer’s disease.

Scholarship has long suggested that the prolific mystery writer may have suffered from some form of dementia before her death. Now, her writing – along with early essays written by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, an American congregation – is the focus of studies that examine the association between writing complexity and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

University of Toronto professor Ian Lancashire has analyzed Christie’s works, counting the number of different words used and their frequency. By comparing early works with those written toward the end of her life, Lancashire concluded that Christie suffered from some form of mental deterioration in her later years.

As for the nuns, they’re part of a 20-year study into memory and aging. Autobiographies the sisters were required to write upon entering the order decades earlier were examined for grammatical complexity and “idea density.” The results were similar to those Lancashire found in Christie’s writing. The nuns whose youthful writing was the least complex were 60 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer’s later in life than those who packed more content into fewer sentences.

So, does simple writing cause dementia? And is writing style a reliable indicator of  future mental competence? I don’t know, but for now, I say, “Bring on those subordinate clauses and compound sentences!”

For more, check out the story on NPR.