Processing Speed & Alzheimer’s: Repairing What Remains

Now that treatment with Leqembi has, at least for now, cleared amyloid plaques from my brain, I’ve noticed something important: I am still dealing with slow processing speed.

A recent experience made this very clear. I was helping my brother renew his driver’s license. He doesn’t use a computer, so I had previously set up his DMV account using my email address. When it came time to renew, California required that everything be completed online before scheduling an appointment.

I logged in, entered my email, and tried what I believed was the correct password. It didn’t work. I tried again. And again. After several failed attempts, I assumed something was wrong with the account and spent nearly two hours creating a workaround, setting up a new account with a different email address and overriding the original one.

Only after all of that did the mistake become obvious:
I had been entering the wrong password, the account password instead of my email password.

This wasn’t a memory problem. It was a processing speed problem. With faster processing, I likely would have caught the error quickly. Instead, my brain stayed stuck on the wrong track.

That experience led me to an important realization:
Removing plaques is not the same as restoring function.

So I began looking for ways to improve processing speed and turned to ChatGPT. The strategies I found closely matched what I’ve learned about rehabilitating mild cognitive impairment (MCI):
the brain can still adapt, relearn, and improve.