Transcript 11-2 (Part 2): Physical Changes in Later Life

Created By: Tawhid, Jessie, Mellisa, and Kara
December 1 st , 2011
Period: 5
A.P. Psychology
Health Information
 The body's disease fighting immune system weakens, making the elderly
more susceptible to life threatening aliments.
 A lifetime worth of accumulated antibodies, older people suffer less
short-term ailments (like a cold).
 The brain's neural processing slows.
 Older people have slower reactions, take longer to solve perceptual
puzzles, and to remember names.
 Brain regions important for memory begin to deteriorate.
 The brain's weights reduces by about five percent by the age of 80.
Dementia
 Dementia is a loss of brain function that occurs in certain diseases.
 A series of small strokes, a brain tumor, or alcoholism can progressively
damage the brain, causing the mental erosion call dementia.
 Dementia can be due to many small strokes. This is called vascular
dementia.
 Symptoms include difficulty with language, memory, perception,
emotional behavior or personality, cognitive skills (such as calculation,
abstract thinking, or judgment).
 It usually occurs in older age. It is rare in people under the age of 60. The
risk for dementia increases as a person gets older.
Alzheimer’s Disease
 A brain ailment that affects 3% of the world's population.
 First destroys memory and then starts to deteriorate your ability to
reason.
 After 5 to 20 years the person may become disorientated and lack
emotion than soon leaves the person mentally vacant almost like a "living
dead.”
 Loss of brain cells and the neurons that produce the euro transmitter
acetylcholine may contribute to Alzheimer's.
 People who are more physically active or are more educated are at less of
a risk for Alzheimer's.
 An autopsy of an Alzheimer's patient shows that the neurons that
produce Acetylcholine have shriveled protein filaments and globs of
degenerative tissue(plaques).
 Drugs are in the works to help prevent proteins from becoming plaques.
The End
Hope you learned something!