week 9 - long term memory - dementia Flashcards
dementia
- what does it describe
a general loss of function
dementia
- characteristics
progressive
irreversible
results in death
memory loss and effects on language functioning are hallmarks
dementia
- causes
neurological disorder
caused by progressive cell death
dementia
- syndrome characterized by
memory impairment and at least one of the following
- aphasia -> language impairments
- apraxia -> motor memory impairments
- agnoisa -> sensory memory impairments
- abstrast thinking / executive function impairmemts
impairments in social behaviour
not explainable by another disorder (depression)
degenerative dementias
are presumed to have a degree of a genetic cause
- cortical and subcortical dementias
Alzheimers (cortical most common 65% of diagnoses)
Parkinsons (subcortial - dopaminergic loss)
frontal temporal dementia
nondegenerative dementia
are a heterogeneous group of disorders with diverse origin
chronic alcohol or drug abuse
alzheimer’s disease
- progressive stages of alzheimers disease
early
needs reminders
daily routines difficult
concentration is difficult
loss of recent memories
alzheimer’s disease
- progressive stages of alzheimers disease
middle
may need hands on care
may get lost easily
changes in personality
alzheimer’s disease
- progressive stages of alzheimers disease
late
severe confusion
needs help for personal care
may not recognize self or family
memory impairments
difficulty learning or retaining new information (repeated converstations)
information retrieval deficits (cant recall names)
personal episodic memory impairment (misplacing items)
declarative (semantic) memory (WHAT) more than procedural (implicit) memory (HOW)
language deficits
list generational deficits (esp, in AD)
word finding difficulties (naming problems)
verbal fluency deficits
less complex sentence structure
relatively preserved auditory comprehension
visuospatial impaiements
visual recognition impairments
- trouble recognising familiar faces
spatial deficits
- getting lost in familiar surroundings
executive function impairments
planning, predicting, correlating, abstracting
often the first impairment noticed in highly educated/intelligent people
(because difficult to compensate for)
Alzheimer’s disease
- anatomical correlates
cortical degeneration
the entorhinal cortex (link between neocortex and hippocampus) shows the clearest evidence for cell loss, which may explain why memory problems occur early in teh disease
affected areas are the limbic cortex, inferior temporal cortex, and posterior parietal cortex
the primary sensory and motor areas are spared
demographics of aging
today almost 1 in 10 people are over 60 years old
by 2050 1 in 5 people will be over 60
cognitive impairments such as dementia will become more common
Our population demographics are changing
More older people
So dementia more common
dementia and language
- research?
Research has been carried out on Iris Murdoch (1919–1999), the renowned Irish novelist who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
dementia and language
- research?
what did they do
Garrard et al. (2005) compared her first published work, a novel written during her prime, and her final novel.
Her work became less sophisticated
Subsequent research by Pakhomov et al. (2011) showed the syntactic complexity of Iris Murdoch’s writing decreased over time.
dementia and language
- research
sign of impairment?
Signs of impairment before diagnosis - Le et al. (2011)
(Le et al. (2011) carried out a detailed longitudinal analysis of the writings of Iris Murdoch, Agatha Christie (suspected of having Alzheimer’s disease towards the end of her life) and P.D. James (anovelist with no signs of cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease). )
showed a sharp decrease in vocabulary size, increased repetition of phrases, and irrelevant filler words or phrases.
dementia and language
- research
comparison of writings
Van Velzen et al. (2014) reported a detailed comparison of the writings of Iris Murdoch and Agatha Christie focusing on their lexical diversity (richness of vocabulary).
Murdoch much more sudden and extreme drop
concluded Agatha Christie did not have Alzheimer’s disease but rather some other neurodegenerative condition.
P.D. James showed only marginal writing impairments in old age due to normal ageing.
