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Study links dementia to sleep loss
The behavior of research participants was found to vary according to how much sleep they had received.
In older volunteers, a shortage of good quality, or slow-wave sleep, was found to be linked to future memory problems.
This was subsequently linked to disappearance of neurons in the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) area, which often occurs with age.
The study, which has been featured in the journal Nature Neuroscience, asked participants to memorize a list of words and recall them after having slept through the night.
Dr Matthew Walker, from the University of California at Berkeley, US, and his co-researchers said in the report: “These data support a model in which age-related mPFC atrophy diminishes SWA (slow-wave activity), the functional consequence of which is impaired long-term memory.”
Full story of sleep loss and dementia at Nursing Times
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Rock Star Nearly Loses Career With ‘Curable’ Dementia (VIDEO)
Dick Wagner had enjoyed a successful life on stage, playing lead guitar for bands like Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and Kiss, when he had a stroke and a heart attack in 2007.
"I woke up from a coma after two weeks with a paralyzed left arm," said Wagner, now 70 and living in Arizona. "My profession as a guitarist, I thought was over."
He and Cooper co-wrote the majority of the band's top-selling songs, including the 1975 hit, "Welcome to My Nightmare."
But Wagner's own personal horror show had just begun. He worked hard at rehabilitation, but new symptoms began to appear: mental fuzziness and an odd gait.
"I couldn't turn to the left as I walked, only to the right, and I would do a spiral and fall," he said. "I fell completely flat on my face in the driveway on the concrete. I didn't know what had happened to me."
Full story of rock stars curable dementia at ABC News
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Fostering a different attitude to dementia
Is it us or people with dementia who are hollowed out?
When I first graduated from university, I remember reading an account of an interaction with a resident with dementia. Alighting from the bus after an outing, she turned to the driver and said: "Thank you for that. I can't remember what I did but I know I enjoyed it!"
This highlights an important and sometimes forgotten aspect of dementia: people may forget events quite quickly but emotional memory lingers. Feelings of frustration, joy, happiness or despair may continue well past the event that provoked the feeling.
Is the capacity for feeling and emotion lost in the person with dementia? I don't believe so. What is lost is a sense of positivism - a ''while there's life, there is hope'' feeling - on the part those who care.
This is not to blame people who care; it's what we would expect might happen if you have an older adult who is functionally very dependent and unable to communicate with you.
Full story of attitude change for dementia at The Age
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Behind the Wheel with Dementia
Dementia sufferers most likely to stop driving based on decision of caregivers
Some reports say that dementia patients may be more likely to have car accidents while driving. But, are accidents the reason that people stop driving when they have dementia?
A recent study found that about 40 percent of people with mild to moderate dementia were still driving. The number one reason that people with dementia stopped driving was the caregiver’s belief that it was too risky. Very few people stopped driving because of accidents or having their license taken away.
The study, led by Stephan Seiler, MD, of the Department of Neurology at the Medical University of Graz in Austria, sought to find what factors were considered when dementia patients stopped driving.
The researchers looked at patients who were part of a long-term dementia study in Austria.
Full story of driving with dementia at Daily RX
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Brain injuries still mysterious, but research is building
For a problem that has no doubt been around as long as humans have been falling on hard objects and bashing one another's skulls with clubs, brain injuries are still surprisingly mysterious.
Scientists, including a cadre at the University of Pennsylvania, are lifting the veil, though, and what they're seeing is already "dramatically" changing American sports, said Douglas Smith, who heads Penn's Center for Brain Injury and Repair.
Everyone from parents to pro athletes to military leaders is suddenly paying more attention to "mild" brain injuries, or concussions, and their long-term consequences.
Brain injury, Smith said, is the "signature wound" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That, coupled with a Philadelphia-based lawsuit by professional football players, who say the explosive hits they took on the job put them at risk for brain damage and dementia, has heightened interest in the damaged brain.
Full story of brain injury research at Philly.com
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Loneliness linked with dementia risk
People who feel lonely may have an increased risk of developing dementia — whether or not they are married or have social support, according to a new study from the Netherlands.
Among the older people who said they felt lonely at the study's start, 13.4 percent developed dementia over the next three years, while 5.7 percent of participants without lonely feelings developed dementia, according to the study. The findings held when researchers took into account whether participants were married, or said they were socially isolated.
"The fact that ‘feeling lonely’ rather than ‘being alone’ was associated with dementia onset suggests that it is not the objective situation, but rather the perceived absence of social attachments
that increases the risk of cognitive decline," the researchers wrote in their findings, published online Monday (Dec. 10) in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
However, exactly how the link may work remains unclear, according to the researchers. It could be that feelings of loneliness are a reaction to diminished thinking skills. But it could also be that those who are lonely experience a lack of stimulation, and this affects the brain systems involved in thinking, the researchers said.
Full story of loneliness and dementia at Fox News
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Caring for people with dementia
Although the elderly are mostly affected by dementia, it is not a normal part of the ageing process. Globally, 35.6 million people suffer from dementia and a new case is diagnosed every four seconds.
In Malta, the numbers are also on the rise. In fact, it is estimated that in three years’ time, 1.25 per cent of our population will suffer from dementia. This counts for approximately 4,892 cases.
Dementia is a degenerative condition which causes deterioration in thinking, memory, behavior and the ability to perform basic tasks and activities of daily living.
It is caused by various types of brain illnesses, the most common being Alzheimer’s disease, which is also a major cause of disability and loss of independence among the elderly.
Other contributing factors may be vascular dementia and dementia with lewy bodies, an abnormal collection of protein that develops inside the brain’s nerve cells.
Full story of caring for dementia at Times of Malta
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Cholesterol linked to dementia, cognitive decline
P. van Vliet of Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden, The Netherlands published a report in Journal of Alzheimer's Disease to suggest that cholesterol has something to do with risk of dementia and cognitive decline.
High cholesterol is a known cardiovascular disease risk factor, but it is less known how cholesterol is associated with dementia and cognitive decline, according to the author.
The author reviewed research and found that high serum cholesterol levels in midlife, but not high cholesterol levels in late-life, were associated with elevated risk of late-life dementia and cognitive decline.
Statins can lower cholesterol and observational studies suggest that statin therapy may lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline, but randomized controlled trials did not confirm such a therapeutic effect on late-life cognitive function.
Full story of cholesterol and dementia at Food Consumer
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Caring for dementia patients leads to new brain health venture
A new brain health program — set to launch next month and home-grown in Sarasota — uses neurological research to help clients who may be facing cognitive impairment make the most of what they have.
Nicci Kobritz, a geriatric specialist and nurse practitioner who operates Youthful Aging Home Health, says the program, called Scienza, evolved out of her work with dementia patients.
“Reasons one, two and three why people come into home care are because of memory,” Kobritz says. “Scienza is basically formalizing what we’ve already been doing, zeroing in on managing their chronic conditions. Our aides are specially trained in managing behavior so we don’t have to medicate them.”
After witnessing the results of managing a dementia client’s environment — using music, games, exercise and other therapies — Kobritz became curious about the science behind it. Her research led her to Ken Kosik, a neurological scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Then she teamed up with Sarasota neurologist Gregory Hanes, who is now the medical director of Scienza. The program became a separate corporation with the involvement of Mike Mullan, president of the Roskamp Institute, which conducts brain research at its Sarasota laboratories.
Full story of dementia patients at The Herald Journal-Health
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The Many Faces of Dementia: Memory loss versus Alzheimer’s
As America’s population ages, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia are becoming increasingly prevalent and troublesome problems. Everyone fears the onset of dementia and frequently jumps to the conclusion: “ I just can’t remember anything. I must be getting Alzheimer’s.”
Correct diagnosis is critical. When you can’t remember where you left the keys to your car, it may not be dementia. As we age, particularly after the mid-60s, we tend to loose brain mass — actual volume at the rate of about 1 percent per year. So some memory loss can be normal.
When we had the Alzheimer’s care home, we generally only had residents who were diagnosed as mid-stage dementia, predominately Alzheimer’s disease. But on several occasions, we had applications from family members saying that “Mom” needed to have full-time care because she was forgetting everything.
As part of admission procedures, we always asked for a health care professional’s diagnosis. On one occasion, the adult child brought Mom in so we could meet with her. We talked for about a half hour with Mom and her daughter. During the conversation, Mom was reasonably conversant and able to remember most things — both recent and long term. Mom might have been diagnosed with “MCI” or mild cognitive impairment. Maybe.
Full story of faces of dementia at The Union
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