Thread by @duty2warn

1/9 Join Dr. John Gartner and co-host Dr. Harry Segal for the first episode of “Shrinking Trump,” a weekly show dedicated to analyzing Trump from a psychological point of view. We discuss Trump’s recent signs of dementia from his Gettysburg Address to his falling asleep in court. Watch:

or listen on Spotify:

Or Apple:
youtube.com/live/IPo1Z54sy…
podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/shrin…
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shr…

2/ We interviewed Dr. Vince Greenwood who conducted an empirical study comparing Trump and Biden on signs of dementia and aging. I have said “it’s a tale of two brains: Biden’s brain is aging and Trump’s brain is dementing.” Dr. Greenwood put both those hypotheses to the test. We report on his data here

3/ Greenwood: “According to DSM-V You need to show decline in at least one of six areas, and language is one of them. The advantage of the language function is that we have hours of observational data: it’s called videotape.”

4/ Greenwood compared speeches Trump and Biden made in their middle age to their current speeches to measure decline. He rated them on 7 measures of dementia:
Phonemic paraphasia, semantic paraphasia, vocabulary, disordered syntax, word-finding difficulty, palilalia (compulsive repetition), and tangential speech

5/ Trump was elevated on all of the dementia variables while Biden was elevated on none.

6/ Trump shows a sharp escalation in linguistic signs of dementia while Biden shows no such changes.

7/ Next Greenwood compared both men on normal signs of aging: speech rate decrease, reduced volume, speech tremor, hoarseness in voice, alterations in vocal pitch, occasional disfluencies, difficulty with word finding. Biden shows more normal signs of aging than Trump

8/ Gartner: "We can see why the public is confused. They see Biden’s signs of normal aging (without realizing they’re normal) and Trump’s signs of dementia (without realizing they’re symptoms of disease.) That’s why we need the voice of doctors who can help us interpret the meaning of these signs and symptoms."

9/ Greenwood: “Biden’s speech rate decreased. He speaks more slowly, with reduced volume, tremor in his speech, hoarseness in speech, vocal pitch changes and occasional disfluencies. None of these are related to underlying neurological difficulties.”