key question

• what is the cognitive key question?

  How can psychologists’ understanding of memory help patients withdementia?
• What is dementia ?

  A chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes cause by a brain disease or injury and it is marked by memory disorders, personality changes and impaired reasoning.

  • alzheimers is most common type of dementia- more common in women than men
• Dementia statistics :

  • affects 944,000 people in the uk
  • The cost of dementia in the UK is currently £26 billion
  • How can psychologists’ understanding of memory help patients withdementia?
• Symptoms of Dementia

  • loss of memory
  • other cognitive deficits like problems with understanding
  • depression
  • mood swings
• Is there a cure for dementia?

  There is no cure but it is established that if we could delay the onset of dementia by five years, we would have the number of deaths from dementia.

  No treatments can slow or stop the spread of diseases causing dementia throughout the brain
• Cognitive stimulation for dementia:

  • This therapy stimulates the mind, keeping it active
  • it involves patients getting together in groups to discuss, play games and solve puzzles
  • it works best for patients in the mild to moderate stages of dementia as it can slow down the progress of the disease as well as reduce stress and loneliness
• Dementia linked to Tulving

  More recent episodic memories are lost first, but sufferers often keep memories from their youth or childhood tight to the end. Semantic memory seems to be lost separately because sufferers may recognise a friend but forget their name.

  Procedural memory is also affected separately, it may explain the confusion sufferers experience because they are suddenly unable to do tasks they have taken for granted
• Cognitive stimulation and Tulving

  Most dementia sufferers will be able to access these episodic memories from their childhood because it fades slow, semantic memory can help link episodic memorises together , enabling sufferers to retrieve more and more details from their LTM
• Cognitive stimulation and schemas

  he idea of Reconstructive Memory can be applied to this therapy. If memories are reconstructed using schemas, anything that reinstates schemas will help with memory. A lot of elderly people find themselves cut off from familiar things. 
• multi store model- linking to dementia

  • If the STM is affected then someone with dementia got told new information, but this wasn’t encoded/stored and thus cannot be recalled. A way to help would be to ask very specific questions to cue memories.
  • Using pictures and colours can help in encoding memories and retrieving them . For example they might respond better to a photo of a family member than their name. writing things down for people with dementia can replace their impaired STM, such as labelling keys and door or placing notes as reminders.
• Early - mild stages of dementia

  • memory impairments where short term memory is affected, forgetting recent events
  • experience cognitive decline- difficulty planning, organising and decreased ability to concentrate
  • behavioural changes- slight changes in mood
• Late- severe stages in dementia

  • individuals loose recognition of family and their sense of identity, even procedural memory is impaired
  • communication abilities are nearly non existent
  • has severe motor difficulties such as cannot walk, loss of bladder control, weight loss