I live the same day on repeat – wherever I go, NOTHING is new
A RETIRED man in his 80s began to feel like was witnessing the same events over and over again.
He described his 'Groundhog Day'-like predicament: “Every day is a repeat of the day before."
"Wherever I go, the same people are on the side of the road, the same cars behind me with the same people in them.
"The same person gets out of the cars wearing the same clothes, carrying the same bags, saying the same things … nothing is new."
The man complained to his e-book manufacturer because he thought it was malfunctioning and showing the same material over and over again.
And he even contacted a technician about his TV repeatedly showing the same news.
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His family members had no luck convincing him that he was misperceiving events.
According to a new report published in the journal , the elderly man was experiencing a rare complication of Alzheimer's disease.
The condition is called déjà vécu - which means to have lived something before - with recollective confabulation (DVRC) and sometimes seen in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Different form the much-used term , which describes the eerie but fleeting feeling of having seen or experienced something in the present before, with déjà vécu you're left with persistent impression that new encounters are repetitions of previous experiences.
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People with temporal lobe epilepsy, schizophrenia or who've gone through a traumatic brain injury can also experience rare phenomenon.
Compared to people with typical Alzheimer's disease, patients with recollective confabulation "have impaired recognition memory but are also overconfident in their self-assessment of recognition memory," the researchers wrote.
What causes it is still unclear, but the researchers said some think it's due to dysfunction in the hippocampus - the part of your brain that helps convert short-term memories into long-term memories.
Sufferers often won't be able to understand that they're experiencing déjà vécu and they'll develop disabling, delusion-like false beliefs and behaviors to justify their abnormal perception, the report's authors wrote.
'Recollective confabulation' describes this act of producing false evidence to support false beliefs.
Doctors completed the neurological assessment of the man and found that he was suffering form memory loss, impulsive behavior and cognitive decline, and he often conflated two separate stories as being just one.
Upon examining the man's cerebrospinal fluid, which surrounds and cushions the brain and spinal cord, they found a reduced level of the protein amyloid beta-42 but elevated levels of the tau protein.
These are signs of Alzheimer's disease, as key part of the condition's progression is the build-up of two substances inside the brain called amyloid and tau, according to .
These clump up and form tiny structures called plaques and tangles that make it harder for the brain to work properly.
Eventually the brain struggles to cope with the damage and the person begins to have problems with memory and thinking.
The case report authors wrote of their subject two years after the onset of his symptoms: "His recollective confabulation symptoms remain pervasive and bothersome".
But "he continued to live at home and remained independent with self-care". And "his recall of autobiographical information was relatively preserved".
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The largest published case series to document DVRC included reports of 13 patients, nine of whom had probable Alzheimer's, according to the report.
Three of the patients had mild cognitive impairment, and one had frontotemporal dementia.
What is Alzheimer's?
Alzheimer's disease can affect everyone differently and get worse over time.
Common early symptoms of Alzheimer's are:
- memory problems, such as regularly forgetting recent events, names and faces
- asking questions repetitively
- increasing difficulties with tasks and activities that require organisation and planning
- becoming confused in unfamiliar environments
- difficulty finding the right words
- difficulty with numbers and/or handling money in shops
- becoming more withdrawn or anxious