Alzheimer's disease

Examples of Alzheimer's disease in the following topics:

• Neurocognitive Disorders

  • Alzheimer's disease accounts for 60% to 70% of cases of dementia.
  • The cause of Alzheimer's disease is poorly understood.
  • Alzheimer's disease is characterised by loss of neurons and synapses in the cerebral cortex and certain subcortical regions.
  • The neurocognitive impairments related to Parkinson's disease are diagnosed using the same criteria listed above for Alzheimer's disease.
  • Summarize the diagnostic criteria, etiology, and treatment of Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease

• Cognitive Development in Late Adulthood

  • Distinct from a normal decline in memory is dementia, a broad category of brain diseases that cause a gradual long-term decrease in the ability to think and remember to the extent that a person's daily functioning is affected.
  • Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of neurocognitive disorder, accounting for 50% to 70% of cases.
  • Most of these disorders are slow and progressive; by the time a person shows signs of the disease, the changes in their brain have already been happening for a long time.
  • About 10% of people with dementia have what is known as mixed dementia, which is usually a combination of Alzheimer's disease and another type of dementia.

• Physical Development in Late Adulthood

  • The aging process often results in a loss of memory, deteriorated intellectual function, decreased mobility, and higher rates of disease.
  • Age is a major risk factor for most common neurodegenerative diseases, including mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, cerebrovascular disease, Parkinson's disease, and Lou Gehrig's disease.
  • While a great deal of research has focused on diseases of aging, there are only a few informative studies on the molecular biology of the aging brain.
  • Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease and is the most common form of dementia in older adults.

• Genetic Basis of Intelligence and Learning

  • Approaches in cognitive genomics have been used to investigate the genetic causes for many learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, and neural disorders such as Down syndrome, autism, and Alzheimer's disease.

• Brain Imaging Techniques

  • Structural imaging, which deals with the structure of the brain and the diagnosis of large-scale intracranial disease (such as a tumor), as well as injury.
  • Functional imaging, which is used to diagnose metabolic diseases and lesions on a finer scale (such as Alzheimer's disease), and also for neurological and cognitive-psychology research.
  • However, they can be used in some forms of medical diagnosis, including for Alzheimer's.

• Amnesia

  • Neurocognitive disorders are a broad category of brain diseases typical to old age that cause a long-term and often gradual decrease in the ability to think and recall memories, such that a person's daily functioning is affected.
  • These diseases also have a significant effect on a person's caregivers.
  • The most common type of dementia is Alzheimer's disease, which makes up 50% to 70% of cases.
  • People with Alzheimer's also have trouble with visual-spatial areas (for example, they may get lost often), reasoning, judgement, and insight into whether they are experiencing memory loss at all.

• Genetic and Environmental Impacts on Intelligence

  • Genetic causes for many learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, and neural disorders, such as Down syndrome, autism, and Alzheimer's disease have been investigated by the field of cognitive genomics, the study of genes as they relate to human cognition.

• Other Approaches to Therapy

  • Studies have demonstrated the efficacy of art therapy, as applied to clients with memory loss due to Alzheimer’s and other diseases, stroke residuals, traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, dealing with chronic illness, and aging.

• Stress and Cardiovascular Disease

  • Cardiovascular disease has a number of behavioral risk factors, many of which are related to stress.
  • Cardiovascular disease has a number of behavioral risk factors, some of which are related to chronic stress.
  • Medical researchers are not sure exactly how stress increases the risk of heart disease.
  • Stress may lead to obesity and diabetes, which are both linked to cardiovascular disease.
  • They named these personality types Type A, which tends to increase risk of heart disease, and Type B, which tends to decrease risk of heart disease.

• Etiology of Schizophrenia

  • While genetics, environment, neurobiology, and psychosocial stress contribute to schizophrenia, the exact cause of the disease is unknown.
  • Schizophrenia is a severe neuro-psychiatric disease that affects approximately 1% of the world's population.
  • Identical twins show a 50% concordance rate; individuals with two parents with the disease show a 40% rate; fraternal twins show a 12%–15% rate; individuals with one schizophrenic parent show a 12% rate; and individuals with a schizophrenic non-twin sibling show an 8% rate of also having the disease.
  • In contrast to this, the general population has a 1% chance of developing the disease.
  • Most researchers agree that both genetic vulnerability and environmental triggers must be present for the disease to develop.