Boxers, football players or soldiers might develop TBI.ĭepending on the part of the brain that's injured, this condition can cause dementia signs and symptoms such as depression, explosiveness, memory loss and impaired speech. This condition is most often caused by repetitive head trauma. Signs and symptoms, including a severe decline in thinking (cognitive) skills, usually appear around age 30 or 40. Caused by a genetic mutation, this disease causes certain nerve cells in your brain and spinal cord to waste away. Studies are ongoing to determine how having mixed dementia affects symptoms and treatments. Autopsy studies of the brains of people 80 and older who had dementia indicate that many had a combination of several causes, such as Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia and Lewy body dementia. Common symptoms affect behavior, personality, thinking, judgment, and language and movement. These are the areas generally associated with personality, behavior and language. This is a group of diseases characterized by the breakdown of nerve cells and their connections in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. Other signs include uncoordinated or slow movement, tremors, and rigidity (parkinsonism). This is one of the more common types of progressive dementia.Ĭommon signs and symptoms include acting out one's dreams in sleep, seeing things that aren't there (visual hallucinations), and problems with focus and attention. Lewy bodies are abnormal balloonlike clumps of protein that have been found in the brains of people with Lewy body dementia, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. These tend to be more noticeable than memory loss. The most common signs of vascular dementia include difficulties with problem-solving, slowed thinking, and loss of focus and organization. Blood vessel problems can cause strokes or affect the brain in other ways, such as by damaging the fibers in the white matter of the brain. This type of dementia is caused by damage to the vessels that supply blood to your brain.

It's thought that these clumps damage healthy neurons and the fibers connecting them. Plaques are clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid, and tangles are fibrous tangles made up of tau protein. While several genes are probably involved in Alzheimer's disease, one important gene that increases risk is apolipoprotein E4 (APOE).Īlzheimer's disease patients have plaques and tangles in their brains. This is the most common cause of dementia.Īlthough not all causes of Alzheimer's disease are known, experts do know that a small percentage are related to mutations of three genes, which can be passed down from parent to child. Types of dementias that progress and aren't reversible include:Īlzheimer's disease. Some diseases look like dementias, such as those caused by a reaction to medications or vitamin deficiencies, and they might improve with treatment. Depending on the area of the brain that's damaged, dementia can affect people differently and cause different symptoms.ĭementias are often grouped by what they have in common, such as the protein or proteins deposited in the brain or the part of the brain that's affected. Dementia is caused by damage to or loss of nerve cells and their connections in the brain.

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