Disorders of Thought, Emotion, and Memory

Question One 

The term dementia does not refer to any specific condition. However, it refers to a group of diseases that lead to mental impairment characterized by retardation in the brain functions such as impaired judgment or memory loss. The symptoms include forgetfulness with limited social skills. In most cases, Alzheimer's is a common cause of dementia in many people. A condition such as Alzheimer's is based on a diagnosis of exclusion because many groups of diseases present similar symptoms as Alzheimer's ( Ji et al., 2019). Therefore, doctors must rule out many other possible causes of dementia to diagnose Alzheimer's. 

Question Two 

Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis can either be through exclusion or the microscopic examination in the laboratory. When exposing under the microscope, a brain that suffers from AD shows numerous microscopic features that can aid in diagnosing AD. For such a brain, the microscope can reveal neuronal loss and granulovacuolar bodies. Other features can be amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and Hirano's bodies, especially in the cerebral cortex and Hippocampus on both sides, but more evident on the left side( Ji et al., 2019). Also, loss of neuromelanin pigmentation in the locus coeruleus is another microscopic feature that is such brain shows under examination. Lastly, such brains also present the least moderate cortical atrophy marked in multimodal association cortices and limbic lobe structures. These features can be critical to diagnosing AD. 

Question Three 

The AD attacks the brain and destroys most of the brain that functions together coordinate memory. In Ella’s case, her Hippocampus is the most affected in this case. Hippocampus is the part of the brain that leads to the formation of memory and memory retention. Alzheimer's disease (AD) reduces the size of the Hippocampus. The shrinking Hippocampus loses most of its features that aid in-memory storage ( Ji et al., 2019). Therefore, AD damages the Hippocampus of storing information, and this leads to frequent loss of memory. 

References 

Ji, F., Pasternak, O., Ng, K. K., Chong, J. S. X., Liu, S., Zhang, L., ...& Chen, C. L. H. (2019). White matter microstructural abnormalities and default network degeneration are associated with early memory deficits in Alzheimer's disease continuum. Scientific reports ,  9 (1), 1-11.