Progressive changes in artistic performance of a Chinese master with Alzheimer's disease

Paradigm shift: semantic memory decline as a biomarker of preclinical Alzheimer's disease

“…Additional analyses on her life long literary productions showed that impoverished vocabulary and syntax were already present in her writings from her late 40s and 50s, decades before the clinical onset of AD [15]. A similarly semantic, but somehow even more abstract mechanism, was recently reported in the longitudinal characterisation of the painting skills of a Chinese painter, who showed a progressive impoverishment in his work, concurrent with the progression of AD [16]. These studies are accompanied by other research that has looked at latent aspects of lexical performance in the spectrum from normal ageing to MCI and AD [17,18].…”

Arts may represent another door to the world of Alzheimers disease

“…In fact, being famous for the realistic representations of natural objects such as flowers and birds, his artworks after the dementia represented another topic, the scene series. In the previous report in Cortex [1], we showed only the series of the flowers. However, we considered it more impressive for the scene series and thus we selected some works of the latter and presented them here (Figure A-C).…”

“…We recently reported a case of the first oriental artist to be influenced by Alzheimer's disease (AD) [1]. In this report, a Chinese master of painting, born in 1929, was diagnosed of AD and his painting style changed remarkably after he developed AD.…”