Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How Dementia Works
Sat, 07 Jun
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The number of people suffering from dementia is expected to explode in the coming decades and, in a pleasant surprise, countries around the world are taking steps to plan for the increase in friendly, caring ways. Find out all about this devastating disease and what's being done to prepare in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What is dementia and how does it affect individuals?
So that would be aphasia. Yes. He couldn't produce language.
Well, he produced – yes, he could not produce language. He said things, but it didn't make any sense. Gotcha. But he had an understanding. He could see the frustration. Yeah. I know how I'm supposed to – my grandmother is driving us, let's say, and she doesn't know how to get there. He does, and he can't tell her, but he's telling her. Yeah. It's just coming out all mixed up.
And that's a hallmark of dementia is there's emotional changes in the person because they're not communicating like they want to, say. People aren't responding like they want the people to. And they'll get snippy and then ultimately, say, withdraw. They'll just give up on communicating at all because it's too frustrating or just too sad, you know? Yeah.
Which is one of the common results of dementia. It's a comorbidity. No, it's a complication.
Yeah, and with the single-stroke event, or actually with the multi-strokes, it's different for everyone. There isn't any single, like, well, this is going to happen because this person had a stroke. Right. It could be a variety of different things from... You know, paralysis on one side of the face or body, bowel and bladder control problems. He didn't have any of those.
He looked totally the same. Physically, he walked and talked the same except for the fact that they weren't real words. Right. That was like the most noticeable thing. I remember you telling me about your grandfather before. I don't remember what it was. It was a long time ago.
We were talking about speech like we're in Nicky's area or Broca's area. Yeah, yeah. Something like that. Totes. So with Alzheimer's, it first attacks the hippocampus, which means that it's going to take away your episodic memory, which is your memory of recent events, right? Yeah.
And then it starts to move its way into other areas of the brain where your judgment is affected, your speech patterns are going to be affected, your personality is very much affected and changes. With Alzheimer's. With Alzheimer's. But not as much with the stroke.
Yeah, with vascular dementia, you know, there might be some other things where like part of the face is sagging or the patient can't move their arm or something like that. But yeah, the personality will remain intact because those regions of the brain aren't affected like they are in Alzheimer's. Yes.
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