Dementia

Question 1

What is dementia?

Answer 1

…a clinical syndrome caused by a wide range of
diseases that affect the brain. Its core feature is a
decline in cognition

Question 2

State that at least three of the following areas must be

involved in Dementia: Cummings and Benson (2003)

Answer 2

Language
Memory 
Visuospatial skills
Emotion or personality 
Cognition

Question 3

What are some causes of dementia?

Answer 3

Sub-cortical dementias

• Parkinson’s disease
• Wilson’s disease
• Huntington’s disease
• Progressive supranuclear palsy

Other causes 
Intra-cranial conditions (tumours, hydrocephalus)
Head injury
Korsakoff’s / Wernicke’s syndrome
Alcohol-induced dementia
Chronic drug use
Boxers’ syndrome (dementia pugilistica) 

Infectious diseases
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
Neurosyphilis
AIDS dementia complex

Question 4

What does cortical mean?

Answer 4

Cortical = language

Question 5

What does Sub-cortical mean?

Answer 5

Sub-cortical = speech

Question 6

What are some communication difficulties in dementia?

Answer 6

• Semantics affected
• Pragmatics affected
• Articulation, phonology and syntax relatively unaffected (until late stages)

Question 7

What semantic errors are common?

Answer 7

Initially naming deficits, empty
speech, moving onto comprehension
difficulties and lack of output

Question 8

What are the semantic errors caused by?

Answer 8

attention deficits,
perceptual (not verbal) deficits, poor
lexical access, disorganised semantic
representations.

Question 9

What pragmatic errors are common?

Answer 9

Irrelevant speech, lack of reference, not considering needs of listener, inappropriate topic change, lack
of initiation, poor coherence, cohesion.

In early stages can speak (at speech and
language level) but cannot communicate
(no purpose, lacking content)

Question 10

What are pragmatic errors caused by?

Answer 10

Linguistic knowledge most dependent on cognition

Question 11

What syntactic errors are common?

Answer 11

Generally intact
Some difficulties as in normal ageing,
e.g. sentence fragments, unfinished
sentences
Difficulties in the late stages of dementia

Question 12

What phonology errors are common?

Answer 12

Generally intact until late stages

Question 13

Which elements of language are less common to be affected?

Answer 13

Articulation, phonology and syntax

Question 14

What are the main impacts on the family?

Answer 14

Fear, worry, relief, work

Question 15

What are the main impacts on society?

Answer 15

NHS, money, police, job loss due to care

Question 16

What are the clinical symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 16

Deficit in episodic memory
Communicative function
Rapidly forgetting recently acquired information
Semantics and pragmatics affected early
Longer hesitations
Slower speech rate
Writing more affected than oral language

Question 17

What are the clinical symptoms of Vascular Dementia?

Answer 17

Caused by cerebral vascular disease

No typical linguistic communication profile due to the various types and possible areas affected in the brain

Question 18

What are the clinical symptoms of Dementia with Lewy bodies?

Answer 18

Insidious onset
Round lumps of protein are found in the cell process of neurons
Memory 
executive functions
Attention
Disease progression depression
Behavioural problems

Question 19

What are the clinical symptoms of Frontotemporal dementia?

Answer 19

Disinhibition
Apathy
Occasional aggressive behaviour
Echololia- repetiton of someone elses speech
Supranuclear palsy and motor neurone disease

Question 20

What is PPA?

Answer 20

Primary Progressive Aphasia
A language variant of frontotemporal dementia
cognitive/behavourial problems

Question 21

What is the impact of dementia on the individual?

Answer 21

Isolated
Vulnerable
Lack of control
Overwhelming 
Unable to form and maintain relationships
Scary