Brain Scan Case Study Essay

In times past many people thought that memory loss was a normal occurrence for elderly people. This thinking was major reason for why Alzheimer’s disease was not caught until very later in the stages. Alzheimer’s disease is not a normal part of aging. After heart disease, cancer, and strokes, Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of death in adults in the Western world. “It is estimated that 4.5 million Americans over the age of 65 are affected with this condition. After the age of 65, the incidence of the disease doubles every five years and, by age 85, it will affect nearly half of the population” (Robinson).

Alzheimer’s disease is the progressive loss of memory and mental functions. The disease affects memory, thought control, language, and other cognitive functions. The disease typically appears with old age and is often found age 60. Alzheimer’s causes the brain to develop clumps and tangles fibers in the brain tissue along with the loss of neuron connections. Throughout the brain, proteins are abnormally distributed and they form tangled bundles of fibers and amyloid plaques. Some neurons fail to function properly and lose their connections, which are necessary for the transmission of messages to the body. The hippocampus is the key brain structure in the formation of memories and often experiences the first signs of damage.

Alzheimer's disease is considered one of the many forms of age-related dementia. Previously the neurological community frequently referred to

Throughout history there have been reports of decreased memory and mental deterioration that accompanied old age. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer who described the symptoms in a woman in Germany in the 1907 but it was not until the 1970’s that AD was considered to be a major disorder and AD continues to be a major health concern worldwide (Reger, 2002).

“What is Alzheimer’s disease (AD)?” Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia that affects an individual’s memory, cognition, and behavior disturbances that ultimately diminishes their quality of life.1-2 Dementia is not a specific disease it is a general term for a variety of symptoms that affect memory and intellectual thinking that causes difficulty in our tasks of daily living.(5) The confusion between these two terms is extraordinary. It’s helpful to think of dementia as the symptom and to think of AD as the cause of that symptom. Although, there are many causes of dementia for the purpose of this paper, Alzheimer’s will be the only one discussed.

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There is evidence from older individuals who are deemed “clinically normal” that the process of Alzheimer’s disease starts way before the clinical diagnosis of dementia, thus suggesting a preclinical stage (Sperling et al., 2011). The criteria for the preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s Disease is broken up in three stages. Stage one consists of the presence of A displacement in the brain, stage two is the displacement of A plus neurodegeneration, and stage three is the displacement of A, neurodegeneration, and subdued cognitive deficiencies. The classification for an individual to be grouped into one of these stages is based on the amount of A levels (low levels in the cerebrospinal fluid, or high levels in the brain) and/or the neurodegenerative process (Burnham, et al., 2016).

As we age, it is natural for cognitive deterioration, however if this deterioration significantly impairs one’s independence, a diagnosis of major neurocognitive disorder is given There are currently 24 to 36 million people with neurocognitive disorders around the world, with 4.6 million new cases emerging each year (Hollingworth, P., Harold, D., Jones, L., Owen, M. J., & Williams, J. (2011); Ames, D., Chiu, E., Lindsesay, J., & Shulman, K. I., 2010). Those suffering with a neurocognitive disorder experience a significant decline in facets of cognitive function such as: memory and learning, attention, perceptual motor skills, planning and decision making, language ability, or social cognition (APA, 2013, 2012). Alzheimer’s disease is the most

One cognitive defect affecting elderly patients is Alzheimer's disease. This cognitive disease affects many populations around the world, but mainly aging individuals3. Though the quantity of life is extending with modern medical practices4,

In the first study titled “Comparison of memory fMRI response among Normal, MCI, and Alzheimer’s patients,” the hypothesis being tested was that there would be differences on an fMRI memory encoding task between Normal elderly, patients with MCI, and patients with Alzheimer’s. The second hypothesis that was used as a control measure, was a sensory task between Normal elderly, patients with MCI, and patients with Alzheimer’s. There were 14 Normal, 11 MCI, and 10 Alzheimer’s participants in this study (Machulda et. al

Alzheimer’s disease is a very slowly progressive disease that occurs inside the brain in which is characterized by damage of memory. Also this type of disease can lead into interruption in language, problem solving, planning and perception. The chance of a person developing Alzheimer’s disease increases enormously after the age of 70 (Crystal, 2009). Also people who are over the age of 85 have over a 50 percent chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease. This type of disease is not at all normal in the aging process and is also not something that happens out of no where in a person’s life.

Alzheimer’s disease is the biggest cause of senile dementia in Europe and the United States affecting nearly 36 million people worldwide (Prince, Albanese, Guerchet & Prina, 2014). It is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder of the brain, severely affecting the temporal and frontal lobes, and in particular the limbic structures contained within these regions (Hooper & Vogel, 1976). Such structures include the hippocampus (contributing particularly to spatial memory (Schmajuk, 1984) and the amygdalae, both of which are primarily affected (Chan et al, 2001). As such, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterised by a progressive cognitive impairment, usually beginning with memory loss and progressing further to involve multiple cognitive and

Alzheimer’s Disease was first described over 100 years ago by Alois Alzheimer in Germany, characterising the first case with memory impairments and the presence of neuropathological plaques and tangles, which today, are major indications of the disease.² Progressive memory loss is the clinical trademark of AD but eventually, cognitive function also deteriorates.³ The neuropathological trademarks of AD involve the accumulation of β amyloid (Aβ) proteins expressed as plaques and the phosphorylation of tau proteins expressed as neurofibrillary tangles.³ The formation of these plaques and tangles are estimated to begin 20 years before clinical symptoms arise.² MRI studies have shown the association of AD with hippocampal atrophy, however, it remains difficult to distinguish from other forms of dementia.⁴

Even normal aging brings necessity to work out additional strategies for smoothing everyday activity and communication (Ferraro, Wilmoth, 2013). The old people lose the ability to focus on the subject and to switch from one kind of operations to another, while performing multi-task activities (Roščina, 2015). Researchers consider the speech failures in AD to be a manifestation of the impairment in the different cognitive domains. The damage is widespread, so cell connections are disrupted; the neuron network fails to provide informational retrieval and coordination of different operations in the domains. The authors of the studies based on the results of the different tests found out in the

Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence Analysis of EEG Alzheimer’s Disease Cross Recurrence