Working memory and long-term declarative memory are affected early during the course of the disease.
Older memories – which have been recalled or spoken about more often – are more firmly established than newer memories. This means that a person with dementia may forget recent events, but still be able to recall detailed memories from earlier life.
Encoding – Your brain converts this information into a form that can be stored. It is held in your short-term memory first.
Short-term memory loss can be one of the earlier symptoms of dementia, which could be caused by Alzheimer's disease or other underlying health concerns.
At first, Alzheimer's disease typically destroys neurons and their connections in parts of the brain involved in memory, including the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus. It later affects areas in the cerebral cortex responsible for language, reasoning, and social behavior.
Administration: The examiner reads a list of 5 words at a rate of one per second, giving the following instructions: “This is a memory test. I am going to read a list of words that you will have to remember now and later on. Listen carefully. When I am through, tell me as many words as you can remember.
You have trouble following a conversation. You find it hard to make decisions, finish a task or follow instructions. You start to have trouble finding your way around places you know well. You begin to have poor judgment.
Memory problems
Difficulties with memory are the most well-known first signs of dementia. For example, a person may not recall recent events or may keep losing items (such as keys and glasses) around the house.
The Mini-Cog test.
A third test, known as the Mini-Cog, takes 2 to 4 minutes to administer and involves asking patients to recall three words after drawing a picture of a clock. If a patient shows no difficulties recalling the words, it is inferred that he or she does not have dementia.
Psychologists distinguish between three necessary stages in the learning and memory process: encoding, storage, and retrieval (Melton, 1963). Encoding is defined as the initial learning of information; storage refers to maintaining information over time; retrieval is the ability to access information when you need it.
Age-related memory loss and dementia are very different conditions, though they may share some overlap in symptoms. However, normal forgetfulness is often caused by lack of focus and it never progresses into serious territory. Dementia, on the other hand, will get worse over time.
Episodic memory, working memory, semantic memory, procedural memory are all impaired at some stages of dementia. Most complaints however concern recent episodic memories. From a cognitive viewpoint, there are several theories that distinguish two functions for retrieval of recent information.
Patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) not only are suffering from amnesia but also are prone to memory distortions, such as experiencing detailed and vivid recollections of episodic events that have never been encountered (i.e., false memories).
In the later stages, memory loss becomes far more severe. A person may not recognize family members, may forget relationships, call family members by other names, or become confused about the location of home or the passage of time. He or she may forget the purpose of common items, such as a pen or a fork.
This is why an Alzheimer's patient might remember an event from 20 years ago but can't remember what they did mere minutes ago. “First in, last out” is often used to describe the peculiar pattern of memory loss that AD causes. This concept is a take on an inventory valuation method used in accounting.
If you aren't sure which stage of dementia you or your loved one are in right now, take an online Alzheimer's test. This can help pinpoint an individual's symptoms and stage.
The five-minute cognitive test (FCT) was designed to capture deficits in five domains of cognitive abilities, including episodic memory, language fluency, time orientation, visuospatial function, and executive function.
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a tool that helps healthcare professionals detect mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease in people. A 2021 study found that it is a better measure of cognitive function than the MMSE. It consists of 30 questions that take 10–12 minutes to accomplish.
There is no way to be sure how quickly a person's dementia will progress. Some people with dementia will need support very soon after their diagnosis. In contrast, others will stay independent for several years.
Mild cognitive impairment vs. dementia. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition that affects a person's thinking and memory skills, but not enough to significantly affect day-to-day life. In contrast, dementia can cause significant memory loss, confusion, personality changes, and disability.
Dementia is typically diagnosed when acquired cognitive impairment has become severe enough to compromise social and/or occupational functioning.
And yet it affects about 10 million people in the United States. For people diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, within just one year 10 to 15% of them will go on to develop dementia, a general term for loss of memory and other mental abilities that is severe enough to interfere with daily life.