Clinical Neurology (Aminoff): "Dementia & Amnestic Disorders" Flashcards
The main difference between dementia and delirium is ________________.
maintenance of consciousness and constancy of symptoms
What is apraxia?
Difficulty in doing certain motor movements despite normal muscular structure.
Although memory impairment is a normal part of aging, it is considered abnormal if ____________.
other capacities are compromised (like judgment, visuospatial reasoning, behavior, or language)
What percent of dementias are reversible?
10%
Autonomic hyperactivity is present more often in ________________.
acute confusional states (aka delirium)
Language function is impaired more often in ______________ dementia.
frontotemporal (because Broca’s area)
Hypotension is suggestive of which kind of reversible dementia?
Hypothyroidism
What does a positive 14-3-3 test indicate?
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
“Mixed” dementia encompasses which two types of dementia?
Alzheimer’s and vascular
Explain the evidence for prionic transmission.
Fetal brain tissue grafted onto the brains of patients with Parkinson’s will develop alpha-synuclein protein aggregates.
In addition to Alzheimer’s disease and Pick’s disease, _____________ is also a tau-opathy.
progressive supranuclear palsy
Neurofibrillary tangles contain ________-phosphorylated tau proteins.
hyper
What percent of Alzheimer’s patients have a genetic cause?
1%
Having the apolipoprotein ___ allele lowers the age of onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
E4
________-secretase produces the amyloid plaques that cause Alzheimer’s.
Gamma
Because the amount of amyloid plaques do not correlate with disease severity, ______________ are thought to be the causal agent of Alzheimer’s.
soluble oligomers of amyloid
What does tau do?
It stabilizes microtubules.
Unlike amyloid plaques, the amount of tau intracellular tangles does ________________.
correlate with disease severity
How do tau tangles cause dementia?
It’s thought that disrupted axonal transport contributes to the symptom profile.
List three structural associations with Alzheimer’s.
1) . Cortical atrophy with neuron loss
2) . Vascular changes
3) . Synaptic dysfunction
Usually, the presymptomatic phase of Alzheimer’s is about _____ years and the symptomatic phase is _____ years.
10; 10
Depression is often present early in Alzheimer’s but sometimes progresses to ______________.
agitation and restlessness
Psychosis and loss of social graces are ___________ symptoms of Alzheimer’s.
late
Amyloid shows up _________ in the Alzheimer’s disease course than tau.
earlier
PET scans of those with Alzheimer’s can show _______________.
decreased metabolism in the temporal and parietal lobes
What are the three most common causes of dementia?
1) . Alzheimer’s
2) . Vascular
3) . Frontotemporal
