Dementia

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Dementia

• Psychology 2617

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Introduction

• We are all getting older.
• Baby boomers are getting really old
• (basically my parents generation)
• So, we are starting to take notice of cognitive
  and neural declines with aging
• Big big political thing too

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Normal Aging

• Older people are usually happier than us!
• They get fewer small ailment
• But more big ones
• Many big adjustments though

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Cognitive changes

• Seems that there are cognitive changes, though
  how, why and to what extent, that is
  controversial
• Crystallized vs fluid intelligence
• Biggest changes are in new learning, abstract
  problem solving and behavioural speed

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Brain changes

• Brain does not age uniformly
• Parietal lobe for example remains pretty much
  intact
• Biggest decline is in the prefrontal cortex,
  where we think executive functioning is, explains
  the drop off in problem solving
• Neurotransmitter changes and Parkinsons

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Dimentia

• Multi infarct dimentia is probably the biggest
  cause of dimentia
• Cortical vs subcortical dimentia
• Static vs progressive
• Reversible vs irreversible

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Alzheimers

• More than half of all dimentia is from AD
• 2 times more women than men
• Could be because women live longer though
• Dimentia and brain stuff
• Neurofibrillary tangles and neuritic plaques

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AD

• MASSIVE cell death
• In essence, you get like lesions everywhere
• cortical dimentia, but you get these lesions,
  holes really, everywhere

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Neurotransmitters affected

• ACh is important in memory, especially in HP
• The ACh system is severely damaged in AD
• Indeed it is almost targeted
• Other systems too though

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Memory effects

• Episodic effects
• Eventually semantic effects
• Retrieval cues dont help
• Information was not even encoded
• Nondeclarative stuff, skills etc, are the last to
  go

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Treatment

• Most drugs target the cholinergic system
• This disease not only affects the victim, but
  also his/her family
• NGF is promising
• Treatments will come, but, reversal, I dunno
• Respite care is key for the family

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Parkinsons

• And the depression continues
• Does not always lead to dimentia, but it
  certainly can
• Basically massive cell death in the substantia
  negra
• This connects to the premotor cortex, controls
  fluidity of movement

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symptoms

• Starts out looking like normal aging
• Aches and pains
• Weakness
• Depression
• Unsteadyness
• Eventually you get tremors

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Symptoms continued

• Bardykinesia
• Masked facies
• Festinating gait
• Micrographia
• Hypokinesia
• Resting tremor
• rigidity

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Non motor symptoms

• Visuo spatial impairments
• Executive functioning impairments
• Few linguistic issues beyond motor aspects of
  speech
• Some memory impairment
• Mood problems

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Treatment

• L Dopa is the ey
• Basically maes more DA available
• Can have powerful effects
• MAOI as well

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Huntingtons

• Exceedingly rare
• Dominant gene
• Puppet lie movement
• Psychotic like symptoms
• Caudate nucleus dysfunction
• Initiating movement, modulating it
• Chorea
• No cure

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Creutzfeldt-Jakob

• Anybody want a burger?
• Also from just a random mutation
• Spongiform disorders
• Kuru or laughing disease

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symptoms

• Rapid deterioration of virtually everything
• Happens in like 4 months
• No cure
• No treatment
• No fun

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Conclusions

• Our best bet is probably genetic work
• Gene therapy
• Genetic counseling
• Far as mad cow goes..