Other Dementias

Question 1

Vascular Dementia

Answer 1

• Dementia linked to stroke - disruption to blood supply in the brain
• second most common dementia in UK
• stroke affecting little capillaries in vascular dementia
  -loss of cog function due to disrupted blood supply
• series of small strokes
• Blocked arteries are the most common cause
• strokes deprive brain of blood leading to cells dying
• Many patients have history of hypertension(80%)
• 5 year survival rate
• frontal lobes move prone to stroke (receive blood from a single artery)

Question 2

Focal dementias

Answer 2

• damage is restricted to limited parts of cortex before eventually becoming widespread
• Frontotemporal dementia (FTP) affects frontal lobe
• semantic dementia affects temporal lobe

Question 3

Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)

Answer 3

• Rare but more common younger (less than 65)
• Have pick bodies inside Cells (tau protein clumps)
• grey matter Shrinks + White matter is left
• Different types of FTD

Question 4

Frontal variant FTD

Answer 4

• Frontal degeneration causes:
• personality changes, lack of inhibition + empathy, compulsive beh

Question 5

Semantic dementia FTD + 3 studies

Answer 5

• loss of grey matter in anterior temporal cortex
• Affects semantic Memory (progressive loss of conceptual knowledge)
• Jefferies et Al : good lang +episodic memory which are impaired in AD
• Hodges-> progressive loss of perceptual differentiation of types of birds
• Ralph + Howard -> When delay between seeing+ producing image struggle to copy

Question 6

Posterior cortical Atrophy (PCA)

Answer 6

• Focal
  -Pathology like AD,affecting posterior parietal cortex
• symptoms: blurred vision, inability to recognise faces, spatial problems + impaired reading + writing

Question 7

subcortical dementias - Basal Ganglia

Answer 7

• patterns of deterioration occurs in subcortical structures (basal ganglia)
• Basal ganglia involved in starting + stopping movements
• Affects movement control
• Huntington disease = excessive movement
  -Parkinson disease problems initiating

Question 8

Huntington’s Disease

Answer 8

• genetic disorder with 50% Chance iheritence
• first symptoms OCCur at 30- 45
• restless face, involuntary + excessive movement , poor concentration, anti-social beh

Question 9

Parkinson’s disease

Answer 9

• Affects 1% of 60 year olds
• unknown cause
• less heritable
• degeneration in substantia nigra causes deficit neuromodulator dopamine
• dopamine deficit makes it hard to initiate movement
• Treating with levodopa
• Neg symptoms = unable to generate movement + slowed movement
• pos symptoms = tremors, involuntary movement
• cog changes in later stages

Question 10

Repetitive head injury- can boxing cause dementia?

Answer 10

• brain damage + dementia is seen in some boxers
• chronic traumatic enceparthology = accumulation of abnormal tau = memory loss, confusion
  many people who sustain head injuries don’t dev CTE