• Question: how does Alzheimer’s disease affect your memory as you get older?

    Asked by zaina to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 11 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Amy Birch

      Amy Birch answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      Hi zaina,
      Alzheimer’s disease affects different types of memory. The biggest effect is that it causes a loss of episodic memory. This is how you remember specific events that have happened. This means that people with Alzheimer’s disease start to forget where they have put things, or what they did early in that day or week but can still remember older events (like where they went on holiday 10 years ago). This is because it damages parts of the brain called the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex which are vital for the formation of new memories.
      People with Alzheimer’s disease also have problems with semantic memory, which is how we understand the meaning of words (eg. semantic memory is how you know that an apple is a called a fruit, and not a vegetable).
      This can happen gradually, but sadly people will eventually lose all their memories because the damage in their brains is too severe.

    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      I’m not an expert in this area but I tend to think of it in terms of the conections between the cells in parts of the brain being damaged and not working propery, because plaques (like gunk) build up in the cells and stop them working.

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