A simple personality test could help doctors detect dementia with Lewy bodies, a form of dementia often confused with Alzheimer's disease, sooner, according to a study published in the May 29, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

For someone whose livelihood depended on her mastery of language, it troubled Lynn Forbish when she'd struggle to extract an everyday word from memory -- "cafeteria," say -- only to have "mess hall" pop out instead. Later, as the fuzzy thinking worsened, it was her bra that gave her fits: Did the damn thing hook in the front or the back? Just whose idea was it for women to wear these things anyway? A year ago when she was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia…