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Living Healthfully - March 2009

Here is another presentation of the disease progression:


Earliest Stage- Impairment on learning, memory, thinking, and planning.

Middle Stage- Impairment in speaking, and understanding speech, and visuospatial defect

Severe Stage

On Memory Loss

Memory is a complex function of the brain that uses several storage buffers of differing capacity and duration. It can be divided into three major types: working, episodic, and long-term or remote memory.

Working Memory
• This lasts for < 30 seconds and has a limited storage capacity.

• The reticular activating system and pre-frontal and parietal lobe networks are activated during working memory.

Episodic Memory
• This lasts for minutes to many months or even years and binds information about “what”, “where”, and “when”.
• Normal individuals lay down multiple episodic memories throughout the day, which allow them to move through life connected to previous experience.
• It is commonly tested by asking a patient to recall three words after three to five minutes.
• The hippocampal complex is critical for episodic memory.

Remote Memory
• This stores information lasting for weeks to a lifetime, and contains most of our personal experiences and knowledge.
• The anterior temporal neocortex processes such experience.

In Alzheimer’s disease, the episodic memory is initially lost. And so upon investigation, diagnostic imaging reveals hippocampal atrophy. However at the later stages, other forms of memory maybe affected.



FOR MORE INFO ABOUT ALZHEIMER'S DISEASECLICK HERE
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