Still Alice Howland

Still Alice, a film produced by Koffler, Lutzus, & Brown and directed by Glatzer and Westmoreland (2014), portrayed the life of an early onset Alzheimer’s disease patient named Alice Howland. Dr. Alice Howland is a renowned linguistic professor at Columbia University and a mother of three adult children. After celebrating her 50th birthday, Alice noticed that she forgets words during her presentation or lecture, is disorientated with familiar areas, and have difficulties consolidating new information or events. Unsure of her symptoms, she visited a neurologist, and was diagnosed with early onset familial Alzheimer’s disease after several medical tests. Despite her condition, Alice trained herself through playing word games and word recall.

Semantic memory is the memory for facts and general knowledge about the world, including personal information. The loss of semantic memory is observed in several scenes. The scene where Alice was unable to recall what a highlighter was called and called it a “yellow thingy” was one of the examples that exemplified the loss of semantic memory (Koffler et al., 2014). Alice was seeking feedback for her speech to the Alzheimer’s Association from her youngest daughter, Lydia. When Lydia told her that her speech was unemotional, Alice was offended and was frustrated (Koffler et al., 2014). As an educator, Alice would have known what a highlighter was, but due to her symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, she was unable to recall the word. According to Learning and memory: From brain to behavior, physical and mental exercise will slow down the process and prevent cognitive decline (Gluck et al, 2016). The symptoms that Alice showed, however, was not consistent with what was learned that physical exercise will slow down the process of cognitive decline (Gluck et al., 2016). The facts that Alice had once known were forgotten, even though she had always been exercising and training herself through word recall, which is one task that relies on the semantic memory and working memory. This showed that physical and mental exercise for familial Alzheimer’s disease does not slow the process of cognitive decline. In contrast to the loss of semantic memory, the Bible instructs Christians to hide God’s Words in one’s heart so that one may not sin against God. It is observed that the memorizing Bible verses are considered semantic memories. Through the help of our working memory and semantic memory, we are able to remember God’s Word. Unlike Alice’s memory failure, even though we may think we forgot what the Bible says, but if we hide His Words in our heart, God will enable us to