Lesson 2: Cognitive Disorders

To summarize:

• Delirium is characterized by a sudden onset of disorganization of higher mental processes.
• Dementia is a mental disorder that affects your ability to think, speak, reason, remember, and move. Many types of dementia exist. Some are progressive and permanent. That is, they get worse with time and cannot be cured. Other types can be treated and reversed.
• Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. Alzheimer’s disease involves a loss of nerve cells in the areas of the brain vital to memory and other mental functions. The first sign of Alzheimer’s disease is usually forgetfulness. As the disease progresses, language, reasoning, and understanding are affected. Eventually, a person with Alzheimer’s may become withdrawn, anxious, or aggressive.
• Lewy Body Dementia is caused by lewy bodies (microscopic protein deposits) found in deteriorating nerve cells. Signs and symptoms are similar to Alzheimer's disease.
• Vascular Dementia is caused by an interruption of blow flow to the brain. It’s common for vascular dementia to cause problems with thinking, language, walking, bladder control and vision.
• Other causes that can lead to dementia include: Parkinsons disease, Huntington's disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Frontotemporal dementia.
• Amnesia is defined as a disturbance in the memory of information stored in long-term memory, in contrast to short-term memory, manifested by total or partial inability to recall past experiences. Sometimes the memory loss associated with amnesia includes everything from a person’s past, and other times just bits and pieces are missing. In most cases, amnesia is a temporary condition and is very brief, lasting from a few seconds to a few hours.