Memory and Alzheimer's: 7 Stages of Alzheimer's & Symptoms Essay example

Memory is a set of cognitive processes that allow us to remember past information (retrospective memory) and future obligations (prospective memory) so we can navigate our lives. The strength of our memory can be influenced by the connections we make through different cognitive faculties as well as by the amount of time we spend devoting to learning specific material across different points in time. New memories are created every time we remember specific event, which results in retrospective memories changing over time. Memory recall can be affected retrospectively such as seeing increased recall in the presence of contextual cues or false recall of information following leading questions. Memory also includes the process

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 a degenerative disease of the brain that causes gradual loss of memory, judgement and ability to function. This age-related, non-reversible brain disorder develops over a period of years. This disease is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer. He had noticed changes in the brain tissue of a women who had died of an unknown mental illness. Alzheimer’s usually appears in people over the age of 65 but earlier stages of Alzheimer’s is created throughout adulthood. The early stages of Alzheimer’s is yet unknown but the damages to the brain is said to be caused up to a decade earlier before the problems become evident. Amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and neurons, being the loss of connection between nerve cells, are the main features in Alzheimer’s disease. Abnormal deposits of protein form amyloid plaques and tangles throughout the brain and the at once healthy brain begins to work less efficiently. Over this time, neurons then lose the ability to function and communicate with each other and they eventually end up dying. The damage caused by this soon spreads to a near structure in the brain called Hippocampus. Hippocampus plays important roles in the the brain such as long-term memory. As more and more neurons tend to die, the affected parts of the brain begin to shrink. By the final stage of Alzheimer’s, the damage has spread throughout the affected patient’s brain and the patient’s brain tissue has significantly shrunk. Alzheimer’s disease can also be

Ultimately, Alzheimer’s Disease affects your your entire brain. The cortex shrivels up, making it hard to think, plan, or remember important things. The brain overall also begins to shrink in size. This shrinkage effects the hippocampus the most. The hippocampus is the area of the cortex that plays a big role in the creation of new memories. Ultimately the disease affects the function of the entire body as it causes the degeneration of brain tissue and nerve cells, it makes it harder for the brain to communication with the body and to function

Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. Symptoms usually develop slowly and get worse over time. Alzheimer 's is the most common form of dementia, a general term for memory loss. Alzheimer 's disease accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. Alzheimer’s disease attacks the brain’s nerve cells causing memory loss. Alzheimer’s is one of the top leading causes of death in the United States.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive degenerative disorder of insidious onset, characterized by memory loss, confusion, and a variety of cognitive disabilities. It is the major cause of dementia in the elderly and is characterized by the presence of neuropathologic lesions including: neurofibrillary tangles in the neuronal perikarya and in pyramidal neurons of the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex and neocortex, nucleus basalis of Meynert, and periaqueductal gray. Neuritic (senile) plaques often with a central or core deposition of amyloid within the plaque and in some cases with amyloid infiltration of blood vessel walls (amyloid angiopathy) and the adjacent perivascular neuropil; loss of neurons,

Alzheimer’s disease is the only cause of death in the top ten in America that cannot be prevented, cured, or slowed down. (Alzheimer’s Asscociation) Alzheimer’s disease is an incurable brain disorder that slowly extinguishes memory and intellectual skills and ultimately will make even the meekest task unmanageable. An estimated 5.1 million people over the age of 65 have Alzheimer’s. My grandmother is currently suffering from the effects of this disease.

Human memory is a complex cognitive structure, which can be defined in many ways. One would argue that memory is 1.) The mental function of retaining information about stimuli, event, images, ideas, etc. after the original stimuli is no longer present. 2.) The hypothesized storage system in the mind that holds this information is so retained. A clear distinction is made between different types of memory systems and can be divided into subclasses.

Do you ever wonder how you remember events from your childhood or basic tasks like how to tie your shoe? The answer is quite simple: long-term memory. It is said that long-term memory has unlimited capacity and storage time. Long-term memory is organized into two different categories. The first category is explicit memory, which contains memories that are consciously retrieved (i.e. trivia facts and personal milestones in life). The second category of long-term memory is implicit memory, and is comprised of unconscious recollections like habits and phobias. There are various sections of the brain that are responsible for long term memory. The basal ganglia and cerebellum

The tracks are no longer straight, and they fall apart. As a result, supplies cannot move through cells, and connections between cells are lost (alz.org). The lost connection between cells causes neurons to die. Damage first takes place in the hippocampus, which is an area in the brain responsible for memory. As more neurons die, other parts of the brain are affected. The brain tissue in the hippocampus shrinks severely, as well as the cortex, affecting thinking, planning, and remembering (alz.org). Chronic inflammation in the brain is another result from the disease. Research suggests that it may be caused by the buildup of glial cells (NIH). In a healthy brain, microglia destroy waste and toxins. In a damaged brain, microglia fail to engulf waste and protein collections, including beta-amyloid plaques (NIH). It is unknown why microglia fail to do this, but one study that researches are focusing on has to do with the TREM2 gene. In a healthy brain, TREM2 tells microglia to destroy beta-amyloid plaques and also helps control inflammation in the brain, while in a brain where this gene does not function normally, plaques build up in the brain outside of neurons

Memory is defined in our textbook Mastering the World of Psychology, as the process of encoding, storages, and retrieving information. There are three processes in memory. The three processes are encoding, storage, and retrieval. The first process in memory is encoding. Encoding is “the process of transforming information into a form that can be stored in your memory.” The second process in memory is storage. Storage is “the process of keeping or maintaining information in your memory.” The last and final process in memory is retrieval or retrieving. Retrieval is “the process of bringing to mind information that has been stored

Explicit memory is information that consciously and intentionally remembered. Declarative memory is the recall of information such as dates, words, faces, events, and concepts. Procedural memory is the recall of how to do things such as swimming or driving a car. Procedural memory is usually considered implicit because people don’t have to consciously remember how to perform actions or skills. Semantic memory is the recall of general facts learned. Episodic memory is the recall of personal

There are differing forms of memory, three main forms are short, active/working and long term memories. Active is a form of memory used when recalling steps such as when baking and reading off a recipe. Short and long are named due to the duration in which the events seen are recalled for. Long term memory involves memories that have been stored in a more permanent place much like a hard drive on a computer. Short term memories are chunks of information that are only temporarily stored and without repetition and use of tactics to remember, will be

Long-term memory is where thoughts or other memories are stored that we can recall at any time, even from years ago. Long-term memories can be recalled when needed, even though they may seem forgotten because we don’t constantly think of them. The more important memories however, are the ones we tend to recall more and with more detail than the ones that aren’t as important or as big of a significance. The weaker memories are also more prone to be lost, or the details of them may be replaced by different information. These memories can also be more vulnerable to be forgotten, however they can last for days up to many months and years. There are two different types of long-term memory. The first type is explicit memory. These memories are made

The short term memories are stored in the hippocampus, the long-term are stored in the cerebral cortex, and the flashbulb memories are stored in a special part of the cerebral cortex called the amygdala (Young 2010; Hamzelou, 2011). Short-term memory can hold seven items of information for fifteen to twenty seconds. Information that was received verbally and information that was received visually are kept in different places in short-term memory. To make the most of the limits of short-term memory, the brain chunks two to three facts into one unit of information. Long-term memory, however, is stored by significance and meaning rather than the sequence in which they were received. The two kinds of long-term memory are implicit and explicit memories. Implicit memories are unconsciously remembered, like how to open doors. Explicit memories are consciously remembered. There are three types of explicit memory: episodic, semantic, and declarative.