Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a mental health condition that associates with neurodegeneration and a decline in cognition making its victims lose memory, language capabilities, and praxis. With memory loss, AN individual loses THE ability to recall names, faces, and becomes out of touch with their emotional abilities. The condition affects individuals WHO ARE 65 years and above and with its widespread, the individual encounters personality alterations as well as increased and progressive loss of neurons with senile plaques becoming present. The same THING HAPPENS with their neurofibrillary tangles. Tremendous destruction takes place in their neural network, brain, and evident hippocampal atrophy. AD’s prevalence doubles after every five years and as the individual ages further, the prevalence generates an increase in time dependence exponentially. Nonetheless, AD is not prevalent among all the elderly and several other factors have been associated with normal aging.
My grandfather is one such victim and in his case, he started by forgetting many things, he has developed a tendency of doing harmful things to himself and this makes it harder to live with him. At times, he tries to escape the house because of the delusional thoughts of being somewhere else rather than at his house. His appetite is lost and it has become harder to let him take his medicines. Further, he has sleeping problems because of the negative thoughts that keep running through his mind. In my desire to understand why, my critical thinking led me to psychology in an attempt to understand why my grandfather has been having these experiences. Going through the textbook, I came across three chapters that helped me comprehend my grandfather’s behavior, in chapter 7, topics 2 and 3 on forgetting and biological bases of memory, in chapter 2, topic 4 on the cerebral cortex and in chapter 5, topic 2 on understanding sleep and dreams.
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In chapter 7, topic 3 on biological bases of memory, I came to the understanding that when an individual suffers from AD, THEY become predisposed to memory loss. The cause comes from the alteration of the brain’s neural networks that are responsible for synaptic and neurotransmitter functions of the brain. Like various other mental diseases, AD interferes with the physiology of the nervous system and the brain eventually disrupting the memory process. Alzheimer’s has been known not to attack all memory types with the same measure, what it's associated with is the extreme decline in declarative/explicit memory that limits an individual’s ability to recall personal life experiences, information, and facts. Mainly, the affected area of the brain is the hippocampal formation that controls the sequence of events. However, a possibility exists among the people suffering from AD that they retain part of non-declarative/implicit memories making them classically accustomed to procedural tasks and conditioned responses.
Chapter 7 topic 3 leads into another important psychological relationship between AD and memory loss, topic 2 on forgetting. In the latter topic, based on Ebbinghau’s original research, forgetting can be caused by several reasons, and with respect to my grandfather, amnesia happens to be the reason why he no longer remembers his personal life experiences, information, and facts. Research on amnesia has shown people with memory loss tend to recall the negative feeling and this resonates well with MY grandfather as the negative feelings in his mind influence the way he relates with us and WITH HIS sleepING.
In chapter 2, topic 4, the frontal lobes have three distinct roles to play in the memory process. This comes in addition to its receptive and coordination of messages from every other lobe in the brain. The frontal lobe also produces speech in Broca’s area, instigation of voluntary movement through the motor cortex, and higher functions such as self-awareness, motivation, and creativity, among others. My grandfather’s Alzheimer’s case has interfered with the way his higher functions and with this, the way he reasons and the way he perceives himself has changed interfering with his normal brain functionality. That is the reason why MY grandfather seems to believe that escaping the house would lead him to somewhere else he has come to consider as his. It is important to understand that recognizing one’s brain is recognizing self because one becomes familiar with THEIR thoughts, personality, and everyday experiences. Sadly, MY grandfather no longer seems to recognize his brain and with this, he is failing in recognizing who he is, who he loves, where he lives, and what he does.
In chapter 5 topic is ABOUT understandING sleep and dreams, circadian rhythms, and sleep, in all creatures have been defined by the planet’s cycle of days and nights. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a part of the hypothalamus controls how an individual perceives light and dark information in the brain. With this, messages are then sent to the pineal gland that releases melatonin causing sleep. In the case of MY grandfather, he has become a victim of poor sleeping patterns that interferes with the way he sleeps. While part of his sleep interference associates with the negative thoughts he has, he no longer sleeps like he is supposed. That means MY grandfather has a problem within his brain that limits the way his pineal gland releases melatonin causing him to sleep on time. The sleep problems encountered by MY grandfather have caused him to experience reduced motor and cognitive performance and this makes it easy to understand why he has become lazy lately. Also, this has interfered with his moods and is the reason why he has become irritable. Sleep deprivation is known to increase other illnesses and the lack of it can be associated with the reason grandfather’s Alzheimer’s has increased over time.
Alzheimer’s disease is a mental condition and its presence, LIKE any other mental condition influences the way its patient recall their life experiences and live daily. The case of my grandfather has been associated with memory loss contributed to by an alteration of the brain’s neural networks that are responsible for synaptic and neurotransmitter functions of the brain resulting in his predisposed memory loss. As shown on topic 2 on forgetting, amnesia also results in loss of memory associated with the recall of negative feelings affecting MY grandfather’s personal life experiences, information, and facts. MY Grandfather’s AD case has interfered with the way his higher functions and the way he reasons and the way he perceives himself has changed interfering with his normal brain functionality. With this, his sleeping patterns have also been interfered with and he no longer sleeps his required number of hours because of the negative feelings he harbors in his mind.
My sources came from personal experience and the following chapters from the textbook:
- Chapter 2 on neuroscience and biological foundations, topic 4 on the cerebral cortex
- Chapter 5 on states of consciousness, the topic understand sleep and dreams
- Chapter 7 on memory, topic 2 on forgetting
- Chapter 7 on memory, topic 3 on the biological bases of memory
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