Lecture two ALZHIEMERS Flashcards
Psychologically what does AD affect?
Memory; Understanding and producing words; recognizing people; Thinking and Planning; Seeing, Hearing and Moving; Disturbed sleep cycles.
Forbes and McKay
- -> Vocabulary shrinkage to the vocab of early childhood.
- -> Loss of later acquired words in a strong predictor of early AD
Whats important for meaning and understanding?
The anterior temporal lobe and inferior frontal lobe. Damage in the left hemisphere affects understanding and retrieval
What is memory loss associated with?
Reduction in volume of the hippo campus and the amount of beta amyloid protein (plaques)
Baddely 1993
AD patients have problems distinguishing real words from invented non words in a lexical decision task.
Focal Dementia
Remains confined to the anterior temporal and inferior frontal areas for a long time until it spreads to the rest of the brain.
–> Have problems recognizing and understanding objects and words.
Semantic/Frontal temporal dementia
Atrophy only affects part of the brain
Cuetas (2010)
AD patients can still identify early acquired words but lose the ability to recognize later acquired words.
Domoto-Pielly
Correlation between impaired object naming in AD patients and cortical thinning in the left anterior temporal lobe.
Which hemisphere is recognizing people associated with?
Right
Which area is thinking and planning associated with?
Frontal lobes - loss of nerve cells.
Damage to it means trouble concentrating; thinking and making decisions and deciding what to do. Become passive and don’t initiate actions e.g. getting a drink
What is seeing, hearing and moving associated with?
Can walk well but don’t know the purpose of their walk. Can see, without understanding what they see and hear without understanding what they hear.
Primarily sensory and motor areas of the brain remain relatively unaffected.
Disturbed sleeping cycles
caused by degeneration in the hypothalamus.
Later stages of AD show disturbed sleep patterns and wakefulness.
