Just this morning I received an email about a new app for my mobile phone, developed by an American university, to screen for autism in babies and young children. Like most people, I’m a sucker for looking up medical information on the internet when I’m worried. While I try to stick to reliable sources, it’s incredibly easy get a diagnosis […]
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Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is the second most common degenerative disease causing dementia in younger adults, with onset typically occurring in the 50s or 60s. In FTD, damage to brain cells begins in the frontal and/or temporal lobes of the brain, which often results in personality and behavioural changes or losing the ability to speak or understand language. When conveying a […]
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Life is full of things that are not necessarily what they seem to be, and the same applies when diseases mimic each other and make diagnosis difficult. This is particularly true for different dementias, which often show similar and overlapping symptoms.
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You are preparing to leave your house when you look out the window. You see dark clouds rolling towards you and thunder is echoing in the distance. It looks like rain. You pick up your umbrella and walk outside, prepared for the downpour.
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You know the word…it’s right there…on the tip of your tongue…and…it’s gone again. Argh! Struggling to think of a certain word is something everyone encounters. For a specific group of dementia patients, however, this is a daily battle and often involves words for common household objects previously well remembered (e.g kettle). Semantic dementia is a disease that attacks language in […]
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Getting lost in shopping malls, leaving doors unlocked and difficulty remembering what you ate last night are situations that caregivers and patients with Alzheimer’s disease know well and have to deal with every day. Yet, what would you think, if instead of getting lost, someone had trouble finding the right word? Would you still call this Alzheimer’s disease?
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This month we have sent out an appeal letter in which Chontell Johnson tells her story. Chontell’s mother had the genetic form of Alzheimer’s disease and Chontell made the decision to have predictive testing some years ago. She found out that she carries the form of the gene responsible for causing Alzheimer’s disease in her family. Other family members have […]
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A NeuRA study recently investigated how different types of dementia affect the ability to perform everyday tasks. The focus was on progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) and logopenic nonfluent aphasia (LPA) – two dementias that lead to similar problems in language (at least to the untrained ear, not so according to specific language tests). Under the microscope these dementias look very different: […]
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NeuRA’s Dr Bill Brooks was recently interviewed by Triple J’s Hack for a story on early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I sat down with him after the program aired to discuss his experience, and science communication more broadly.
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When looking at a human face we take it for granted that we can distinguish a happy face from a sad face and a scary face from a relaxed face. People with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias often exhibit deficits in this area, and while this is interesting from a cognitive perspective, it has real world implications for the families of people […]
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