Outcome 1
1.1 Dementia is the progressive decline in the cognitive function, involving all aspects of perception, thinking, reasoning and remembering. This is largely to do with damage or disease. This is progressive and leads to the deterioration of the mind, affecting an individual’s ability to concentrate on daily tasks. The memory is often affected, causing them to forget people, dates and events that are recent to them, behaviour can be erratic and noticeably different than is usual for them, and the ability to control feelings is also affected. As the disease progresses as do the signs and symptoms.
1.2 The progressive decline in cognitive function affects the following key functions of the brain:
The cerebrum is the largest part of the brain, its role is in memory, attention, thought, consciousness, sense and movement. It has four major lobes that are responsible for these functions.
Occipital Lobe: situated in the cerebral cortex and it is responsible for processing information relating to vision.
Frontal Lobe: situated at the front of the brain and it is responsible for decision making, problem solving, controlling behaviour, emotions and conscious thought.
Parietal Lobe: is situated in the cerebral cortex and is concerned with sensory information, putting things in order and spacial awareness.
Temporal lobe: is situated at the sides and base of the skull, and is responsible for vision, memory, language, hearing sense of smell, sound and processing complex stimuli, like faces and surroundings.
Hippocampus: located in the temporal lobe, and is responsible for short term memory and spacial navigation, monitoring and control of movement, its direction and position in which we move.
1.3 When diagnosing dementia it is important not to assume that an individual showing signs and symptoms of depression, delirium and age related memory impairment, has dementia. Especially as the signs and symptoms are very