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Abnormal Memory Disorders

PART A. Two Environmentally Influenced Abnormal Memory Disorders

Dementia is an abnormal memory disorder caused by environmental factors. The disease is caused by damage to the brain, which leads to progressive loss of the thinking ability due to brain damage. The condition leads to deterioration of the thinking capacity, impaired reasoning, and personality changes. The syndrome is most common in aging persons and may be challenging to diagnose since there are no tests that have ever been done for its diagnoses. However, the consciousness of dementia affected people usually is not affected, although it can cause disability (Henderson).

Another environmentally influenced memory disorder is the Wernicke- Korsakoff Syndrome, which is mostly caused by excessive consumption of alcohol. The disease is also a result of the lack of vitamin B1 available in thiamine. The main features of the syndrome include brain dysfunction, an altered mental state as well as other brain abnormalities. The symptoms of this disorder include short term memory, increased confusion, and amnesia. Victims of the condition are mostly reported to have abused alcohol in their past or present. They are most likely unable to process new information or activities. Victims also develop inattentiveness and agitation, while most of them appear to be apathetic (Kuhn et al.).

PART A. Two Genetically Predisposed Abnormal Memory Disorders

One of the genetically predisposed memory disorder is Huntington’s disease (HD). The condition is characterized by mood changes and loss in mental abilities, especially for the old. Other symptoms include unsteady movement and a general lack of coordination in humans. The disease is caused by a huntingtin gene mutation in humans and passed on to generations of the infected people. The condition can be diagnosed through genetic testing to the pre-exposed victims prior to the symptoms showing off. However, there is no cure for HD, and full-time care is required for patients at their late stages of the disease. Study shows that the disease affects both men and women equally, and most of them develop other conditions such as pneumonia and heart diseases due to the movement disorder (Labadorf et al.).

Another memory disorder caused by genetic factors includes Parkinson’s disease (PD). The condition is mostly associated with a movement disorder, such as being slow, impaired balance, fatigue and muscles being rigid. Further symptoms may appear as the disease progress, such as sexual problems and difficulty in swallowing food. PD is closely related to aging since most of the symptoms shown by its patients are available in aging people. Also, PD causes memory dysfunction similar to that in aging due to the destruction of the frontal lobe. Parkinson’s disease is mostly associated with cognitive impairment and difficulty in memory recognition (Lill and Christina).

Part B: Description of How the Aging Process Affects Memory, Intelligence, and Learning

As people grow older, they tend to be slower in digesting information in their brains than in their younger days. The reason is that most of there are changes in the nervous system where information inputs are translated into output. Also, the aging process minimizes the storage and retrieval capacity for information in the memory and, thus, older people will most often forget past details to process new information in their brain. Therefore, reaction time to a stimulus is faster in youths than in older adults, which means that the young will more likely respond to a surprise, unlike the elderly.

Intelligence is also affected by the aging process in that it is most common for older people to make decisions based on logic than the young. The topic is, however, debatable when based on factors such as the speed of response and verbal skills. The IQ of a person increases as they grow older, but only up to a maximum age where it starts reducing. Therefore younger adults can be said to be more intelligent than older adults. Also, learning deteriorates with the aging process. Older people take more time to understand and remember information than younger ones. The ability of the brain to process new information and hold on to it is lost as people grow older. I would, therefore, agree with the phrase that aging is inevitable, and so is memory loss and learning ability (Limbert et al.)

Part B: Techniques That Can Be Used To Improve Memory and To Continue Learning throughout a Lifetime.

People can boost and maintain their memory through healthy lifestyles. Some of the techniques that could be helping in keeping our mind intact include meditation, taking coffee, eating berries, physical exercise, and having enough sleep. Meditation helps in maintaining the short-term or working memory in that it allows people to concentrate on the short-tern information. Besides, taking coffee before an activity has been proven as a memory booster. Research that involved taking a caffeine pill after a learning task showed that remembering was boosted for 24 hours. In this study, participants were made to memorize images and later tested with different photos. The learners on caffeine would more clearly remember the pictures they had seen without confusion (Nicholson and Catherine).

Another essential technique is the visualization of information. Once the eyes have seen something, it will be easier for the brain to register the image, unlike when giving information about an unseen object. Thus, paying attention to objects, images, or pictures helps a lot in boosting and maintaining memory. Older people may draw objects from their imaginations of the information they receive to help them remember the information in the future. Finally, relating new information to something already known boosts our memory. For example, establishing relationships between the known and unknown during studying helps students understand and remember the issue (Nicholson and Catherine).

Works Cited

Henderson, Victor W. “Dementia with lewy bodies.” (2017).

Kuhn, James, Shweta Akhouri, and Edward J. Newton. “Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome.” (2019).

Labadorf, Adam, Andrew G. Hoss, and Richard H. Myers. “Huntington’s Disease.” Neuroimmune Pharmacology. Springer, Cham, 2017. 503-516.

Lill, Christina M. “Genetics of Parkinson’s disease.” Molecular and Cellular Probes 30.6 (2016): 386-396.

Limbert, Megan J., Jennifer A. Coleman, and Angela Gutchess. “Effects of aging on general and specific memory for impressions.” Collabra: Psychology 4.1 (2018)..

Nicholson, Roscoe, and Catherine O’Brien. “Impact of the Educational Boost Your Brain and Memory Program among Senior Living Residents.” The International Journal of Aging and Human Development 85.4 (2017): 456-471.