Understanding Dementia
Understanding Dementia
Dementia is not a disease but a group of conditions resulting from a disease such as Alzheimer’s and Vascular dementia or a group of symptoms which may result from age, brain injury, confusion, difficulty in performing day to day or familiar tasks, changes in personality, mood and behaviour. Dementia is a condition in which there’s a gradual loss of brain function, it is a decline in cognitive/intellectual functioning. Dementia causes permanent and progressive damage to the brain.
Each part of the brain functions differently and therefore when a region is affected individuals can lose significant functions. The brain controls every aspect of our behaviour, from the smallest movement to the most sophisticated thought. The largest part of the brain is called the cerebral cortex, which is divided into different regions, known as lobes; these control the different functions such as:
Frontal Lobe
Planning and organising actions, learning tasks, initiating and stopping regular behaviour, abstract thought, logic, language and personality.
Parietal Lobe
Remembering sequences of actions, body sense(e.g. sensing where one limb is in relation to the rest of the body), sentence construction, calculation, interpreting visual information received from the occipital lobe and locating objects.
Occipital Lobe
Processing information about colour, shape and movement received from the eyes.
Temporal Lobe
Learning new information, recording and storage of verbal memory (such as names), and visual memory (such as faces) and attention.
Every type of dementia involves progressive physical damage to the brain. The main areas affected in most dementias are the temporal, parietal and frontal lobes.
Some doctors and researchers split dementia into two categories – the cortical dementias and the subcortical dementias – based on which part of the brain is affected.
Cortical dementias arise from a disorder affecting the cerebral cortex, the
Dementia is not a disease but a group of conditions resulting from a disease such as Alzheimer’s and Vascular dementia or a group of symptoms which may result from age, brain injury, confusion, difficulty in performing day to day or familiar tasks, changes in personality, mood and behaviour. Dementia is a condition in which there’s a gradual loss of brain function, it is a decline in cognitive/intellectual functioning. Dementia causes permanent and progressive damage to the brain.
Each part of the brain functions differently and therefore when a region is affected individuals can lose significant functions. The brain controls every aspect of our behaviour, from the smallest movement to the most sophisticated thought. The largest part of the brain is called the cerebral cortex, which is divided into different regions, known as lobes; these control the different functions such as:
Frontal Lobe
Planning and organising actions, learning tasks, initiating and stopping regular behaviour, abstract thought, logic, language and personality.
Parietal Lobe
Remembering sequences of actions, body sense(e.g. sensing where one limb is in relation to the rest of the body), sentence construction, calculation, interpreting visual information received from the occipital lobe and locating objects.
Occipital Lobe
Processing information about colour, shape and movement received from the eyes.
Temporal Lobe
Learning new information, recording and storage of verbal memory (such as names), and visual memory (such as faces) and attention.
Every type of dementia involves progressive physical damage to the brain. The main areas affected in most dementias are the temporal, parietal and frontal lobes.
Some doctors and researchers split dementia into two categories – the cortical dementias and the subcortical dementias – based on which part of the brain is affected.
Cortical dementias arise from a disorder affecting the cerebral cortex, the