Today I am responding via my six Reader Response Questions to a 2014 New Yorker article by Michael Kinsley, “Have You Lost Your Mind?”
Click here to read the background of the six Reader Response Questions.
- Describe in your own words what happened in the pages you just read. What are the main points? (Don’t look back at the original text as you do this!)
Let’s start out with a test of your cognition via a multiple choice question. Ready?
Here’s the situation:
There are two women, Janet and Susan. Janet is attacked by a mugger just 10 feet outside her front door. Susan is attacked by a mugger a mile away from her house.
Here’s the question and the three possible answers:
Who is more upset by the experience? (a) Janet; (b) Susan; (c) They are upset the same or it’s impossible to say for sure.
To my mind, the answer is (c) because it’s impossible to say without knowing more information. Did one mugger point a gun at the victim, but the other just make verbal threats? Did Janet’s mugger steal only $20 from her (because that’s all she had) but Susan’s mugger got away with $2000 (her month’s rent)? Does one woman live in a neighborhood where muggings are commonplace and looked on as a nuisance, but the other woman live in an area of no street crime? Has either woman been a victim of violent crimes before?
If you’re like me and chose (c), there’s a good chance you have Parkinson’s disease. If you chose (a), which the test makers say is the correct answer, then you most likely don’t have PD.
At least, that’s how it’s explained in Michael Kinsley’s article, “Have You Lost Your Mind?” Researchers used this question in a larger study comparing people with Parkinson’s to a control group (people who didn’t have PD). It turned out that 86% of the control group chose the correct answer: (a) Janet. But 71% of the experimental group (people with PD) chose (c), the incorrect response.
This is funny, and not in the ha-ha sense, although the article itself is upbeat and often hilarious.
When Kinsley’s article appeared in April, 2014, I laughed as I read it and felt good about my future with Parkinson’s disease. Michael Kinsley had had PD for 20 years (he was diagnosed when he was 43), and yet he wrote this essay with wit and verve. The article went on to become a chapter in his best-selling book, Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide. If he was still so mentally nimble two decades after diagnosis, I was delighted to be part of his club.
Now, reading the article again almost three years later, how does it strike me? What are the points that stick with me as the hard copy sits face down on my desk and I tap away at the keyboard?
First off, it’s still a funny read. He uses humor to assert many of his main arguments. For example, as an aging Baby Boomer, he was bound to get some kind of dementia if he lived long enough. Also, even though PD may be affecting some parts of his ability to think, (1) tests show he still has a high IQ, and (2) he’s still able to crank out articles that get published in high-end magazines like The New Yorker. There are jokes a-plenty throughout the article.
Second, even though Parkinson’s is classified as a movement disorder, he reminds us that there are three distinct issues that Parkies have to contend with: (1) Yes, you have physical symptoms that are the hallmark of the disease: tremors, freezing, facial masking, stooped posture, etc. (2) You also most likely must deal with psychological/psychiatric problems, especially depression and anxiety. And (3) you experience certain cognitive decline, primarily with what’s called “executive function,” which has to do with analyzing a situation, planning a course of action, and carrying it out.
Kinsley focuses a lot of his article on this third issue, the cognitive decline. He reviews (humorously) some of the scientific research on this, and he gets himself tested for changes in his cognitive abilities. On some of the tests he scores well, but on others he bombs spectacularly, especially in the area of executive function. He feels that his poor test scores are probably due to Parkinson’s, as he had also been tested years earlier and at that time was “off the charts” (in the superior range) in every category. So that part is worrisome.
Nonetheless, in the years after his diagnosis, Kinsley worked at intellectually demanding jobs at Microsoft, wrote regular columns for the Washington Post, Bloomberg View, Politico and Slate, and was editor of the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times. (I found this out partially by Googling his name.) So in the end, this essay is still hopeful.
- What’s your reaction to the article?
As I said, when I first read this article three years ago, I felt elated. Now that I have many years of dealing with Parkinson’s under my belt, I’m still glad to know that you can stay mentally sharp with PD, even if you’re slipping in certain cognitive categories. Doesn’t everyone experience cognitive decline as they age? And isn’t it better to lose out on “executive functioning” than some other mental trait, such as the severe memory problems that strike people with Alzheimer’s?
And when I think of all the mental gymnastics that Kinsley went through as he researched, drafted, revised and polished this article, I feel encouraged to do the same.
- What does the article make you think about from your own life?
I’ve been a research subject for many university studies on Parkinson’s, so I’ve taken cognition tests over and over. I rather enjoy them and, since the questions are often the same, I’ve developed strategies for acing certain tasks. I am thankful that during my adult life I’ve worked with outstanding “off the charts” educators, who helped train my mind to deal with the very tasks researchers ask me to undergo.
Take, for example, the challenge to count backwards from 100 by 7s. I know many Parkies freeze or panic when they have to do this, but frankly speaking, so do many non-Parkie adults. Everyone starts out by saying “100…93…” and then the flummox sets in. (Yes, I’m aware I’m using flummox as a noun.)
At the public charter school I work at in the Bronx, we train the children to think of ways to simplify problems such as this – first by visualizing the problem with colored Cuisenaire rods that they manipulate on the desk before them, then by working out the problem in their head.
So here’s my method for counting backwards from 100 by 7s.
First, decide whether the specific computation is complex or a no-brainer. 100 minus 7 is a no-brainer, so you start out saying “100…93.”
However, 93 minus 7 is complex, so you do the following:
- Subtract ten: 93 – 10 = 83
- Add three: 83 + 3 = 86.
86 is your answer.
The next computation is also complex: 86 minus 7, so you repeat the two intermediary steps:
- Subtract ten: 86 – 10 = 76
- Add three: 76 + 3 = 79
79 is your answer.
The next computation is a no brainer: 79 – 7 = 72.
You continue to work your way down like that, and it’s rather fun.
By the way, because we work in this manner with the children at my K-5 school in the Bronx, they repeatedly outperform – by wide margins – other schools on the annual state math exams
- Copy a sentence or short passage from the article that you find especially interesting or unusual:
The politically correct line on intelligence (or, as we say in neurology, cognition) is that it’s not a single thing—I.Q.—but, rather, a collection of talents and abilities that we all have in different amounts. People say this, but I’m not sure how many actually believe it. The notion that intelligence is a number, a place somewhere on the spectrum from smart to stupid, is just too deeply rooted. We say, “She’s as sharp as a tack,” or “You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man” (Kathleen Turner, in “Body Heat”). Nobody I know says, “She’s great at counterfactual inference, but not so great at naming fruits.”
What we’re learning from the study of cognition is that the P.C. view is closer to the truth. There are all sorts of things going on in our heads—and I mean our physical heads, not our minds—that affect how we act or even who we are. This extreme mechanical view can be depressing. That [mental/creative] edge that I’m so vain about is just an extra spritz of some chemical in my brain? But the mechanical view is comforting, too. It says that each of us is a collection of mental strengths and weaknesses: “normal” people as well as people with chronic degenerative neurological diseases. And weaknesses can be overcome, to some extent, by strengths somewhere else.
- What makes this sentence interesting for you?
It’s reassuring to know that you can still have mental strengths even if you’re slipping cognitively in some areas. And that intelligence is really a wide, wide basket of talents and insights and perceptions, not just a single point on a horizontal line. And that “weaknesses can be overcome, to some extent, by strengths somewhere else.”
- What questions does the article raise in you? What questions are you left with?
- If Parkies are most likely to lose their “executive function,” can they work to counter this by, say, planning and implementing all kinds of projects? Throw a dinner party; take on a special project at work; write a novel and finish it on deadline?
- Are there other ways Parkies can work to maintain their mental capacities?
- If pride goeth before a fall, am I, by writing this review and highlighting its humorous side, setting myself up for steep cognitive decline?
- Have I already lost mental capabilities that I’m unaware of?
Just asking!
