dementia

Think You Know What Dementia Is?

Lynette M Burrows

Dementia. Alzheimers. Those are two scary words. Many people think they know what dementia is. What Alzheimers is. They use the terms synonymously. Alzheimers is the most common one, but it is not the only dementia. Over the last month we’ve been talking about memory. In my post “What Do You Remember and How” you learned about the study of memory, the stages of memory, and the types of memory. “Do You Have a Terrible Memory?” discussed why you forget, the types of forgetting, and what normal forgetting is. You also learned that there were two umbrella terms that describe abnormal types of forgetting: Amnesia and Dementia. My post, Amnesia: Beyond the Tropes described what the scientific or medical reality of the forgetting called amnesia. What Dementia Is Many people think it is only about forgetting past events and people. It is more than that. Some believe that changes to memory, thinking skills, behavior, movement, and emotions are signs of senility or senile dementia. That represents a misbelief that serious mental decline is part of aging. Dementia is a term for a variety of symptoms caused by damage to brain cells. This damage is not normal aging. Usually, it occurs after age […]

What Do You Remember and How?

Lynette M Burrows

What do you remember and how do you remember one thing and your sibling remembers something else? Human memory is complex. We try to replicate it with computers and A.I. Technology. But we barely understand how human memory works. Or where we store our memories. Or how and what corrupts our memory. Scientific examination and study of memory only began in recent history.  The Study of Memory The scientific study of memory didn’t begin until fairly late in human history. Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), a German psychologist, pioneered the study of memory. The “father of experimental psychology of memory” began his first experiment in late 1878. He published his study, Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (Über das Gedächtnis in the original German), in 1885. They published the English version in 1913. His study had many limitations. The major one being that his only subject was himself. But he made many discoveries: the forgetting curve, spacing effect, and the learning curve. You can read more about his discoveries on Wikipedia or on Flash Card Learner. What is Memory? Even our everyday definition of memory is complex. Memory is— 1a: the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms–began […]