A shrinking span of temporal continuity in dementia of the Alzheimer's type

To examine the integrity of memory function in terms of temporal continuity in a way that would engage a patient in everyday behavior, such as informal conversation, but still allow memory function to be quantified.

This bedside task allowed the measurement of the duration of continuous, conscious experience of the present and was therefore termed "span of temporal continuity."

We tracked span of temporal continuity in a patient we believed was in the very early stages of Alzheimer's disease longitudinally.

We found a progressively smaller span in which this patient experiences continuity in keeping with disease duration.

In terms of span of temporal continuity in our single subject, we were able to document a progressively smaller span in which VB experiences continuity before any telling neuropsychologic deficits. Hence, our measure might serve to better identify and characterize dementia of the Alzheimer's type in its incipient stages.