Pippin's Question Box

Choose an article from Neuroscience for kids and summarize what you learned.

When I went to Neuroscience for Kids, I learned more about the Alzeimer's Disease and found many highly interesting facts I never knew about this disease. Alzeimer's attacks your brain is is definitely not a normal part of aging! People that are diagnosed with AD have memory loss along with some difficulty with their language and emotions. This is known as dementia, the progressive loss of intellectual abilities. People with AD need help with almost everything including bathing, eating. and going to the bathroom. Unfortunately, there is no cure for disease and will stay with that person for the rest of his/her.


The most surprising fact I learned was that approximately 4 MILLION Americans have Alzeimer's. Also, I learned that. by 2050, over 14 MILLION Americans could be diagnosed with Alzeimer's. I feel that the memory loss part of Alzeimer's is that it's really sad. I mean, soon enough, the person might not even remember family and close friends! The areas of the brain affected by this disease are the Cerebral Cortex, the Basal Forebrain, and the Hippocampus. What causes this disease? This disease and its symptoms usually occur after the age of 65, and it is caused by a gene known as ApoE on chromosome 19. Researchers are not 100% sure of this fact, but it is mainly the risk factor.


After reading the whole article, I found a really nice quote about the Alzeimer's disease that I really liked.


"Alzeimer's can be called the long good-bye. You grieve about the loved one from the moment you begin to observe the gradual loss of memory and the speech and personality changes, because they are incurable. The person you love is gradually changing before your eyes. You say good-bye many times until the final good-bye at death."

~Norma Wylie, 1996 (in Sharing The Final Journey: Walking With The Dying)