Dementia: language problems as early symptoms

Abstract

Dementia is a common disease in older people; who generates anxiety in patients and their families and a high cost to society. With early diagnosis and progress in the treatment of its symptoms in the present and probably his cause in the future may be possible to reduce its negative impact. The search for early cognitive markers of dementia has focused on episodic memory and spatial-temporal orientation; however, recent research suggests that semantic memory is also impaired in its preclinical phase. Besides the fact that the deterioration of communication could be a limitation for the clinical management and therapy, it is suggested that communication disturbances in dementia are prevalent, representing a marker of cognitive impairment, contribute to differential diagnosis, and predict, together with others, the degree of severity of dementia. The challenge perhaps is to estimate the subtle decline in language abilities in the early stages of dementia, with a sufficiently sensitive tool for this. It recognizes the benefits of early communication intervention and the importance of developing interdisciplinary research in communication and dementia