Dementia

What is Dementia? Dementia is an organic brain syndrome which results in global cognitive impairments. Dementia can occur as a result of a variety of neurological diseases. Some of the more well known dementing diseases include Alzheimer's disease (AD), multi-infarct dementia (MID), and Huntington's disease (HD). Throughout this essay the emphasis will be placed on AD (also known as dementia of the Alzheimer's type, and primary degenerative dementia), because statistically it is the most significant …

…clinical approach, Boston: Butterworths The typical AD linguistic impairment pattern includes poor auditory comprehension, poor naming with paraphasia, writing impairment, and poor reading comprehension (Cummings, 1988). According to Benson (1979) [as cited by Cummings, 1988] the pattern of verbal output seen in AD resembles transcortical sensory aphasia (which is associated with focal posterior left hemisphere damage). The difference is that in AD there is less paraphsia, echolalia, and the completion phenomenon, and more impairment of automatic speech production.