Types of cognitive Deficits

Above are three pictures of the brain at various stages. Note the growth of the dark areas of the brain over time. Remember the song “When the Lights went out in Georgia”. This is how the lights go out in the brain.

There is not a well defined road from a cognitive deficit to full blown Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s disease is just one type of dementia. Individuals can experience several forms and levels of dementia. Individual experiences with even Alzheimer’s can vary greatly from person to person. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, up to 40% of dementias are caused by conditions other than Alzheimer’s.

Brain facts:

Types of cognitive Deficits:

• Head Trauma and injury: (CTE) Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, usually caused by repeated blows to the head. We will go into what happens a little later.

• Chronic Inflammation: For decades scientists have debated the role of inflammation in a diseased brain, but now a burst of new research suggests that inflammation not only adds to disease processes of the brain,but that it also ignites the processes. One new study (2019) out of John Hopkins showed that chronic inflammation at midlife is linked to later cognitive decline. It could be that inflammation may be the reason cognitive issues are showing up in people, mostly women, who have had radiation treatment for cancer. We might get into this at some other point.

• Normal Aging: Your brain, like the rest of your body, changes as you grow older. While there is a normal age-related tissue loss and a resultant degeneration of synapses, there is a new finding we can all rejoice over. In 2018 researchers from Columbia University showed for the first time that healthy older folks can generate just as many new brain cells as younger people.

• Mild Cognitive Impairment: MCI is often the beginning stage of dementia. MCI causes a slight decline of the memory function. Unlike other types of cognitive impairment, with MCI only memory is impacted. It is important to treat symptoms as early as possible. Between 10 to 20 % of people 65 and older are estimated to have MCI.

• Parkinson’s disease: Is caused by loss of nerve cells in substanita nigra of the brain. This leads to the loss of dopamine in the brain. Usually it affects the frontal area of the brain associated with balance and movement. 

• Dementia:

◦ Vascular: This type of dementia is caused by impaired blood supply to the brain. And may be brought on by blood vessel blockage or damage leading to strokes or bleeding in the brain.

◦ Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB): Proteins build up in certain parts of the brain responsible for cognition, movement, and overall behavior.

◦ Fronto temporal Lobar Dementia: Also known as Pick’s disease, FTLD is a group of disorders triggered by gradual nerve cell loss in the frontal and temporal lobes resulting in changes of behavior, difficulty speaking, and memory problems. About 60 % of people with FTLD are 45 to 65 years old, but FTLD accounts for only 10% of dementia cases.

◦ Alzheimer’s: This is the most common type of dementia. 60 to 80% of dementia cases are Alzheimer’s. 1 in 9 Americans age 65 and older are affected by Alzheimer’s. It is the 6th leading cause of death in the United States. 

So What:

·         Dementia is a major health issue in the United States. But it is not always fatal and with drugs some of the forms of the disease are treatable.

·         We all, if we live long enough, will experience some form of decline.

·         Cognitive issues represent a wide range of deficits, which makes the diagnosis and treatment of the condition an extremely difficult task. More often than not the discovery of the exact issue lags significantly behind the progress of the disease. In addition, It is common to have more than one condition.

·         There is hope though in continuous research and good brain health. We will go through some of the treatments and points of good brain health in a few texts. But our next text will be on what’s normal aging and what is not.