William Brennan Reported On Terminal Lucidity

For The New York Times Magazine, William Brennan published a feature on “what some researchers call ‘terminal lucidity’ or ‘paradoxical lucidity,’ a phenomenon in which people with late-stage dementia suddenly regain capacities they were thought to have irrevocably lost, including memory and clear speech.” Brennan told Study Hall: “The piece describes some of the first video-verified cases of the phenomenon, which were captured as part of a 5-year, $10 million NIH initiative to study the phenomenon scientifically. Some researchers I spoke to told me that these lucid episodes seem to challenge not only scientists’ understanding of the nature of dementia but also mainstream presumptions about the nature of the mind-body relationship itself.”