Dementia - Is It Forgetfulness Or Dementia: Alzheimers

Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School

Dementia

With dementia, memory loss is severe enough to interfere with someone's ability to function socially and at work. The most common type of dementia is Alzheimer's disease, but there are many other types, including frontotemporal lobar degeneration, dementia with Lewy bodies, and vascular cognitive impairment, which is caused by multiple strokes that interrupt blood flow to the brain. These are some signs of dementia:

• Intellectual function has declined from a previous level. This change in mental ability differentiates dementia from mental retardation.

• The person is aware and alert, which differentiates dementia from delirium.

• More than one type of thinking is affected. In addition to memory, at least one of the following also is impaired: personality, abstract thinking, judgment, use of language, the ability to perform complex physical tasks, or the ability to recognize objects or people. Known as global cognitive impairment, this characteristic distinguishes dementia not only from mere forgetfulness but also from such conditions as amnesia (memory loss only) and speech deficits (caused by stroke, for example).

Last updated:	January 23, 2007