Eli5 What is the differences between early dementia and normal forgetfulness?
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Forgetfulness: You’re about to go on a walk, and as you’re getting ready you move your water bottle from the kitchen table to the small table by the door. You grab a couple more things, and as you’re ready to leave you go back to the kitchen to grab your water bottle but can’t find it. After a little bit of searching you see it by the door and go “Oh yeah that’s right, I put it by the door, duh!”
Dementia: You do the same thing as before, but this time you go back to the kitchen and your water bottle that you clearly remember setting on the kitchen table isn’t there. After some searching you find it somehow moved to the table by the door. Obviously *you* didn’t move it, because that’s something you would have remembered, so that means *someone else* must have moved it, but you live alone so who could have done it? Someone must have broken into your house and moved it!
In the first example, you forgot you moved your water bottle, but after you saw it by the door you remembered moving it. This is completely normal. In the second example, you were confronted with the complete impossibility of your water bottle moving by itself, and since our brains are built to fill in the blanks, your brain rationalized it as the only thing it could think of: someone else must have done it, and then your brain worked backwards rationalizing it from there. This is a common symptom of dementia.
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