• Question: What happens to the mind of people who develop dementia?

    Asked by ells8 to Kate, Mark U, Tess, Yue, Lisa, Jemma, Katie, John on 1 May 2012. This question was also asked by jhorsnall.
    • Photo: Yue Zheng

      Yue Zheng answered on 1 May 2012:

      Hi Ells8! If you know some dementia patients, you might have seen that different people lose different type of memories. Some lose their memories of the loved ones, some lose more recent memories etc. Memories are stored in a network of brain cells, called neurons. Dementia patients suffer from brain cell death, hence their memories are lost. Depending on the type of brain cells that are dead, different part of the memories are lost. There are many reasons that could cause the death of the brain cells—but ageing is the most important one.

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