Why do people with dementia forget things like people/events, but not things like the alphabet or relatively simple grammar? Or do they, and it’s just not really shown in western media?
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It depends on the kind of dementia, but it can cause difficulty with speech, especially word recall. One of the most frustrating things for my grandfather, who had Alzheimer’s, was when he knew what he wanted to say but couldn’t figure out how to say it.
In addition to this, there are different kinds of memory. The memory we use to store skills and knowledge is different to the memory we use to store experiences, so theoretically you could have someone with dementia who is fluent in multiple languages, but can’t remember how they became fluent in them. In dementia, it’s the experience type memory that tends to suffer the most damage, particularly to more recent memories, whereas skill and knowledge memory typically remains more complete. Damage is also common to the way the brain creates new memories, which impacts both experience and knowledge memory creation, but is more apparent in how it affects experience memory creation since it’s easy to see if someone can remember what they did yesterday, and relatively difficult to see if they’ve learned a new skill recently.
It depends on the person. My grandpa has Alzheimer’s. He can’t do simple math or write. He can barely read. He can’t tell time. Yet, he usually knows who his family members are (for now).
They forget that too. I worked with a guy who had forgotten the difference between eating and drinking.
I’m a direct support professional and one of my clients is autistic with dementia, she remembers lots of stuff but the dementia made her very violent and she used to have a great internal clock and that’s just gone now. But her memory isn’t too bad she just isn’t sure where she is in time. Dementia is different for everyone when it’s rots different parts of your brain away.
Dementia is a broad term.
There are many diseases under it.
Some affect memory more than others.
Different areas of the brain do different things. Where the greatest damage is occurring will play a large role in determining how the dementia progresses.
Typically* dementia affects short term first, almost like moving backwards through time. Which is why a lot of dementia patients/sufferers believe it is a much earlier year than it is – 1900s compared to 2000s for example.
*not always the case as there are hundreds of different types of dementia, only 100% diagnosable post mortem.
Did Terry Pratchett not get afflicted with a form of dementia that affected his ability to read and write?
They do forget things like that towards the end. Dementia’s a rather slow process, you get worse year after year, and after a few years there’s not really a lot left of your memory. If it goes on for long enough, the brain doesn’t even remember how to eat or breathe.
My grandmother had dementia and she would frequently get frustrated because she couldn’t remember the words to say what she wanted to say.
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