PSYCO239 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Dementia, Aging Brain, Relate
Document Summary
As a person"s awareness of the environment becomes less clear, he or she has great difficulty concentrating, focusing attention, and thinking sequentially. This leads to misinterpretations, illusions, and, on occasion, hallucinations. This state of massive confusion typically occurs over a short period of time, usually hours or days. It may occur in any age group, including children, but it is most common in elderly persons. Delirium affects fewer than 0. 5% of the nonelderly population, 1% of people over 55, and 14% of those over 85 years of age. Fever, certain diseases and infections, poor nutrition, head injuries, strokes, Disorders of cognition stress (including the trauma of surgery), and intoxication by certain substances may all cause delirium. Cognitive (cid:498)mishaps(cid:499) (e. g. , leaving without keys, forgetting someone"s name) As people move through middle age, these memory difficulties and lapses of are a common and quite normal feature of stress or aging attention increase, and they may occur regularly by age 60 or 70.
