Bruce Willis‘ wife revealed this week how the first subtle sign her husband had dementia was problems with his speech – which his family wrote off as part of his lifelong stutter.
Emma Heming Willis, 46, said while the action movie star had always had the stutter, he largely kept it under control thanks to techniques he learned from acting.
But in the months before he was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, he became not as ‘good at covering it up.’
Known as aphasia, the loss of ability to understand or express speech is often one of the first signs of dementia, striking years before an official diagnosis.
Now, Dr Stuart Fischer, a New York City internal medicine specialist, has revealed that President Joe Biden‘s speech patterns are consistent with aphasia.
Dr Fischer said: ‘Since his recent presidency, he’s had many other neurological problems.’
Similar to Willis, President Biden also had a stutter growing up but it rarely showed during his 36-year career in the senate and eight years in the office as Vice President.
However, recently, Biden has shown signs of deterioration, confusing words, taking long pauses in his speeches and stuttering more dramatically.
