Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health
Forgetting an Appointment or Name of Friend is Not
Necessarily the Beginning of Dementia
Maybe there are just too many things to remember for
the size of your brain
Oct. 8, 2008 – Most older
people that
occasionally struggle to remember the name of a friend or totally forget
an appointment are quick to conclude this embarrassment is caused by
aging - the early signs of dementia. They may be wrong, according to a
study published yesterday in Neurology, the medical journal of the
American Academy of Neurology, which finds this happens to people without
dementia, too.
The study involved 500 people age 50 to 85 that had
been tested and found to have no dementia. They all lived in the
Netherlands.
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Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health |
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Participants were asked about occasional memory
problems such as having trouble thinking of the right word or forgetting
things that happened in the last day or two, or thinking problems such
as having trouble concentrating or thinking more slowly than they used
to.
Their brains were scanned to measure the size of
the hippocampus, an area of the brain important for memory and one of
the first areas damaged by Alzheimer’s disease. (See more below news
report)
Of the 500 people, 453 (90.1%) reported that they
had occasional memory or thinking problems, which are also called
subjective memory problems, because they would not show up on regular
tests of memory and thinking skills.
The study found that in people with occasional
subjective memory problems, the hippocampus was smaller than in people
who had no memory problems.
On average, the hippocampus had a volume of 6.7
milliliters in those with occasional subjective memory problems,
compared to 7.1 milliliters in people with no memory problems.
“These occasional, subjective memory complaints
could be the earliest sign of problems with memory and thinking skills
and we were able to discover that these subjective memory complaints
were linked to smaller brain volumes,” said study author Frank-Erik de
Leeuw, MD, neurologist and clinical epidemiologist, of Radboud
University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Netherlands.
“Because occasional memory lapses were so common,
though, much more work needs to be done to use such complaints
diagnostically “
All of the participants also had white matter
lesions in their brains, or small areas of brain damage. The researchers
measured the amount of white matter lesions, and found that the amount
of lesions was not tied to occasional memory problems.
The participants had all visited a neurology
outpatient clinic not because of memory complaints but for reasons such
as falls, vertigo, chronic head pain, or mild traumatic brain injury.
“To further strengthen the possible connection
between the subjective memory complaints, size of hippocampus and the
development of Alzheimer’s disease in all of the participants will be
investigated again within the coming years,” said de Leeuw.
The American Academy of Neurology, an association
of more than 21,000 neurologists and neuroscience professionals, is
dedicated to improving patient care through education and research. A
neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing,
treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as
epilepsy, dystonia, migraine, Huntington’s disease, and dementia. For
more information about the American Academy of Neurology, visit
www.aan.com.
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More About the Hippocampus
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The
hippocampus is located in the medial temporal lobe of
the brain. (In this illustration of the inferior surface
(underside) of the brain, the frontal lobe of the brain
is at the top, while the occipital lobe is at the
bottom.) |
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The hippocampus is a part of the
forebrain, located in the medial temporal lobe. It belongs to the limbic
system and plays major roles in short term memory and spatial
navigation. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each
side of the brain. In rodents, where it has been studied most
extensively, the hippocampus is shaped something like a banana. In
humans it has a curved and convoluted shape that reminded early
anatomists of a seahorse. The name, in fact, derives from the Greek word
for seahorse.
In Alzheimer's disease the
hippocampus is one of the first regions of the brain to suffer damage;
memory problems and disorientation appear among the first symptoms.
Damage to the hippocampus can also result from oxygen starvation
(anoxia), encephalitis, or mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. People with
extensive hippocampal damage may experience amnesia, that is, inability
to form or retain new memories.
More information at
Wikipedia
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More
About Memory at MedlinePlus
Your mind works a lot like a computer. Your brain
puts information it judges to be important into "files." When you
remember something, you pull up a file. Memory doesn't always work
perfectly. As people grow older, it may take longer to retrieve those
files. Some adults joke about having a "senior moment."
It's normal to forget things once in awhile. We've
all forgotten a name, where we put our keys, or if we locked the front
door. But forgetting how to use the telephone or find your way home may
be signs of a more serious problem. These include
Alzheimer's disease or other types of
dementia,
stroke, depression, head injuries, thyroid problems, or reactions to
certain medicines. If you're worried about your forgetfulness, see your
doctor.
More at
MedlinePlus
●
Forgetfulness: It's Not Always What You Think (National Institute on
Aging) - Also available in
Spanish
●
Memory Loss with Aging: What's Normal, What's Not (American Academy
of Family Physicians) - Also available in
Spanish
●
Understanding Memory Loss (National Institute on Aging) - Large PDF
file
● Memory:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/memory.html
● Brain Basics:
Know Your Brain:
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brain_basics/know_your_brain.htm
Related Topics at
MedlinePlus
●
Alzheimer's Disease
●
Dementia
●
Brain and Nerves
●
Mental Health and Behavior
●
Seniors
>>
National Institutes of Health
The primary NIH organization for research on Memory
is the
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
