How does AD affect cognition?

Question 1

Episodic Memory

Answer 1

• Hippocampus sees the most damage when someone has AD
• Hippocampus is responsible for memory + navigation
• Remembering recent events
• earliest signs of AD to often forgetfulness

Question 2

Memory in AD - 2 studies

Answer 2

• Greene, Baddeley + Hodges -> deficit for both recall + recognition in early AD
• AD damages formation of memory traces themselves
• Backman et al -> repeated free recall + recognition with 100 older adults + looked at performance 3+6 years before dementia diagnosis - impairments can be seen 6 years before diagnosis

Question 3

Mild Cognitive impairment - atrophy

Answer 3

• Whitwell et.al
• shrinkage in anterior, inferior t Medial temporal lobes before diagnosis
• pattern of atrophy suggest episodic memory deficits at early stages

Question 4

semantic memory - atrophy

Answer 4

• Anterior temporal + inferior lobe are important for understanding + producing words
• Atrophy here produces semantic language deficits in AD

Question 5

Category Fluency Task Ellis 2005

Answer 5

• give someone a category + ask them to generate as many items in a minute
• AD have vocab shrinkage
  -early acquired words still used as they are the must robust against the disease

Question 6

TMS - Pobric et al

Answer 6

• Inhibitory TMS to anterior temporal lobes disrupts semantic tasks in line with deficits g patients with dementia
• Done on healthy ppts

Question 7

Executive functions in AD - dual task

Answer 7

-problems coordinating multiple activities
- Baddeley et al-> AD patients specifically impaired At dual task condition
- Longitudinal study that found dual task declines in AD

Question 8

personality changes

Answer 8

• irritable, agitation, outbursts, fidgeting + repetitive beh may relate to lack of cog control
• lack of interest in life (apathy) during moderate AD is associated with Orbitofrontal cortex atrophy ( processing reward value- causes lack of motivations )

Question 9

Iris Murdoch

Answer 9

• wrote multiple books
• began to dev poor memory of story details
• unable to match book characters to titles
  -impaired naming + spelling of objects
• Garrad et al-> analysed 3 novels + found reduced vocab in her last novel
• cookie theft Test -> shown a picture + asks patient to describe what is happening