Often there is a tendency to confuse terms that indicate damage related to the mental state. But there are some distinctions.
- What happens in the brain when dementia sets in?
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Not just Alzheimer’s
- The differential diagnosis
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Is it dementia or Alzhiemer’s disease? Often there is a tendency to confuse terms that indicate damage related to the mental state. But there are some distinctions.
It’s often talked about, but it’s easy to get confused and use one term for the other. Dementia is caused by different causes and there are different types. Among these, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form and follows an irreversible path that goes through several stages.
Therefore, the generic term “dementia” does not indicate a specific disease, but rather a wide range of symptoms associated with the decline of memory or other intellectual abilities.
However, to be attributable to dementia, symptoms must be severe enough to reduce a person’s ability to perform daily activities. In particular, the functions to keep an eye on are memory, communication and language, the ability to pay attention and concentrate, reasoning and visual perception.
People with dementia can have problems with short-term memory, for example: it can happen that they don’t know where bags or wallets are, forget to pay bills, plan and prepare meals.
In many forms of dementia, symptoms come on slowly and gradually worsen.
What happens in the brain when dementia sets in?
Brain cells are damaged in a way that interferes with the ability to communicate with each other normally. This “short circuit” has important effects on the thinking, behavior and feelings perceived by those suffering from dementia.
The brain has many distinct regions, each of which is responsible for different functions (for example, memory, judgment, and movement). The type of brain dysfunction found in different forms of dementia therefore depends on the area of the brain that is damaged.
Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. It causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. Symptoms typically develop slowly and worsen over time, becoming severe enough to interfere with daily activities.
Alzheimer’s is not a normal element of aging, but being over 65 is the biggest risk factor. And it is not just a pathology of old age: about 5% of people who are affected have had an early onset of the disease, ie between 40 and 50 years or between 50 and 60 years.
At first, slight memory losses occur, then over the years the sufferer loses the ability to carry out a conversation or interact in their environment.
The most common early symptom of Alzheimer’s disease is difficulty remembering recently learned information; in fact, the changes due to Alzheimer’s generally begin in the part of the brain that deals with learning.
According to the U.S. Alzheimer’s Association, there are ten symptoms to watch out for:
| Symptom | Demonstration |
| Anterograde amnesia | Forgetfulness and memory problems especially for the most recent events |
| Apraxia | Difficulty performing known tasks such as tying shoes or buttoning that are not related to physical disabilities |
| Agnosia | Difficulty in recognizing commonly used objects and their functions |
| Anomy | Difficulty in giving a name to common things which are however recognized |
| Spatial disorientation | Confusing familiar places |
| Temporal disorientation | Getting the month, season or year wrong |
| Acalculia | Difficulty in performing relatively simple logical or mathematical operations that may involve, for example, having to count and recount money |
| Lose items | Tendency to constantly lose things by forgetting them in the strangest places (keys in the refrigerator, kitchen linen) |
| Changes in mood or personality | Tendency to become confused, suspicious, depressed, fearful, anxious, upset |
| Apathy | Loss of initiative and interest in oneself, others and the environment in general |
Not just Alzheimer’s
The second most common type of dementia is vascular dementia, which occurs after a stroke . There are also other conditions that can cause symptoms of dementia. Some forms are reversible, such as those caused by thyroid problems, depression , alcohol abuse, vitamin deficiencies . In these cases, when the condition causing the dementia is treated, the neurological conditions can improve.
The differential diagnosis
There is no real test that allows to distinguish Alzheimer’s disease from other forms of dementia: in case of suspicion, however, it is possible to undertake a diagnostic path based initially on the exclusion of other diseases with very similar symptoms.
For this purpose, doctors must collect information on the patient’s history (anamnesis), his behavior, perform an assessment of functional and cognitive abilities and prescribe laboratory tests and / or, if necessary, instrumental tests (for example CT).
Based on the results obtained, the doctor may be able to recognize, for example, a vascular type of dementia, or arrive at a diagnosis of possible or probable Alzheimer’s: the absolute certainty that it is this pathology can only arrive once the procedure has been carried out. autopsy examination after the patient’s death.
