Alzheimer's Disease and Memory

Alzheimer's Disease is a serious degenerative brain disease. The main symptoms of the AD relate to memory impairment. Patients experience confusion, depression, hallucinations, delusions, sleeplessness and loss of appetite. AD has no cure and thus inevitably leads to death. Over the age of 65, about 10% gets the disease and over 80, more than half develop the disease. AD affects episodic memory, a memory for events and personal experiences that occurred in a given place at a particular time, most severely. AD also affects semantic memory - a memory that stores general knowledge about the world, concepts and language.

AD develops through a series of stages. First, the MTLs (medial temporal lobe) are affected, in particular the hippocampus, which is very much involved in the formation of new memories. The brain of a patient with AD is found with a low concentrations of acetylcholine in the hippocampus, while the hippocampus of normal people contained higher concentration of acetylcholine. This is because of the severe brain tissue loss in the areas of the forebrain which are known to secrete acetylcholine. 

The brains of AD patients also show abnormal levels of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. Amyloid plaques are caused by deposits in the brain of a sticky protein called amyloid-beta protein. This protein accumulates and damages the membranes of axons and dendrites. Neurofibrillary tangles are caused by accumulation of an abnormal form of the tau protein, which causes the structural support of neurons to collapse.


In the video we watched in the class, the most notable things to be were the families of the patients. The patient is the one who's going through the disease, but the most painful ones are the families. One husband of a patient was all around his wife for all day long, caring for her as if she were a baby. Alzheimer's disease patients often behave aggressively and childishly. They change their mood at any times, and the families have to follow that mood. Some patient didn't even recognize her children. 


I personally feel that the AD is one of the most disastrous disease that a person could get. I don't want to imagine my life around an AD patient - not that they are disgusting or anything, of course. But I never want to watch my parents or my relatives to suffer in the process of losing their memories and at the end become entirely different people. When I find out that I, myself, have the disease, then I would seriously consider committing suicide, because I don't want to throw my families' lives into despair like the ones in the video that I've seen.