dementia

n. A clinical syndrome characterized by deterioration in intellectual ability sufficient to interfere with usual social or occupational functioning. The syndrome of dementia involves persistent impairment in two or more of the following domains of psychological functioning: memory, language, visuospatial skills, judgment or abstract thinking, and emotion or personality. More specifically, dementias are associated with short- and long-term memory impairment, difficulties in producing and understanding speech, difficulties in maneuvering through space and in conceiving of spatial orientation, lapses in judgment, and personality changes.

Dementia is associated with more than 70 different causes of brain dysfunction with Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia the most common forms. Until the 1980s, dementia was considered a ubiquitous condition of global intellectual impairment. Since that time researchers have been able to delineate distinct patterns or preserved and impaired cognitive abilities associated with different dementing illnesses.

- TJM