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Cognitive Disorder
Disorders in the brain. 3 types: Delirium, Dementia, Amnestic disorders.
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Delirium
Consequences of acute injury or challenge to the brain. It is typically intense and short lived. The integrative, well-moderated nature of the brain is affected so that functions are turned on inappropriately. Causal examples might include fever, intoxication, brain injury, and aftereffects of some anesthesias. In effect, people act "crazy," reflecting the active, turned-on state of the brain. There can be hallucinations, unnecessary behavior, and agitation.
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Dementia
Chronic, slowly developing condition primarily characterized by loss of brain functions, often irreversibly. Memory, as a highly integrated brain function, is particularly sensitive to developing dementia—thus, memory loss (especially recent) is often the first sign noted. Usually dementia includes a general loss of cognitive abilities, such as reasoning and other parts of intelligence, attention and concentration, and behavioral control.
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Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT)
Brain disorder, yielding several years of progressive loss of cognitive abilities and eventually death, results from actual loss of brain cells. It is "insidious" (meaning unrelenting in its progression) and without a known cure. As the cells die off, the brain shrinks in size.
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Amnestic Disorder
Brain disorders that primarily affect memory. Even though these persons can typically remember events just after they occur, within minutes the memory is gone, reflecting a failure of the brain to properly store the memory. These persons live in the immediate present or in the distant past (memories before onset of the disorder remain intact).
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Acetylcholine (ACh)
Neurotransmitter, pervasive through the nervous system that contributes to movement, attention, arousal, and memory. A definciency of ACh is found in people with Alzheimers
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Agnosia
Inability to recognize and name objects; may be a symptom of dementia or other brain disorders
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Amyloid protein
Solid waxy substance forming the core of the neuritic plaque characteristic of people with Alzheimers disease
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Aphasia
Impairment or loss of language skills resulting from brain damage caused by stroke, alzheimers or other illness or trauma
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Apoptosis
Naturally occurring process that kills unnecassary nerve cells. It may be induced to occur excessively by amyloid protein and is associated with Alzheimers
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Bradykinesia
Slowed body movements as occur in Parkinson's
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Chorea
Motor problems characterized by involuntary limb movements
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Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
Extremely rare condition that causes dementia
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Neuritic plaque and Neurofibrillary tangles
NP: Clusters of dead neurons found during autopsy in the brains of people with Alzheimers
NT: Brain damage in the form of large numbers of strandlike filaments found during autopsy in people with Alzheimers
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Pick's disease
Very rare neurological disorder that results in presentile dementia
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3 types of dementia
Presentile: Dementia that appears before old age, between ages 40 and 60
Subcortical: Disease affecting the inner areas of the brain below the cortex that differs from DAT in that it involves impaired recall bt normal recognition, more severe depression and anxiety, slowed motions and impaired coordination, but no aphasia.
Vascular: Progressive brain disorder involving loss of cognitive functioning, caused by blockage of blood flow to the brain that appears concurrently with other neurological signs and symptoms.
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Apolipoprotein (apoE) genes
The more you have, the more likely you are to develop Alzheimer's type dementia
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Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome
Disorder that involves an inability to learn new information and is caused by chronic heavy alcohol use
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