50 Fun Facts About Dementia

In which 2004 romance does an elderly man read a love story aloud to a nursing-home resident with dementia?

The Notebook reveals that the listener is Allie, and the tale Duke reads is her own love story, written down so that he could help her remember him.

Which former US president announced his Alzheimer's diagnosis in a handwritten letter to the nation in 1994?

Ronald Reagan wrote, 'I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life,' and lived with the disease for another ten years.

A widely used screening test for early Alzheimer's disease asks patients to draw which everyday object?

A clock packs several skills into one small task: the patient has to draw the face, place every hour and then set the hands to a time the examiner names.

Hogeweyk, a gated village with its own supermarket and pub for residents with dementia, is in which country?

The Netherlands opened Hogeweyk in the town of Weesp, where caregivers wear everyday clothes and play the part of neighbors or friends rather than nurses.

The family of actor Bruce Willis announced in 2023 that his aphasia had progressed to which brain condition?

Frontotemporal dementia attacks the frontal and temporal lobes, so it shows up as changes in personality or language, and it is among the most common dementias in people under 60.

Which small blue flower is the symbol of Britain's Alzheimer's Society and of Alzheimers New Zealand?

Forget-me-not symbols are also placed on notes, bedsides and patient boards in many British health settings, a quiet signal to staff that someone has dementia.

Which crooner sang two farewell concerts with Lady Gaga in 2021, months after revealing he had Alzheimer's?

Tony Bennett often had no memory of a show once it was over, yet on stage at Radio City Music Hall he could still remember every lyric in his repertoire.

PARO, a therapy robot used to calm care-home residents with dementia, is modeled on which baby animal?

Harp seal pups caught inventor Takanori Shibata's eye on a Canadian ice field, where he also recorded their real cries to give the robot its voice.

A 2020 study ranked early treatment of which sensory problem as the most significant way to prevent dementia?

Hearing loss led the study's twelve modifiable factors, and removing it was estimated to prevent about 8% of dementia cases.

An autopsy after the 2014 death of which comedian found Lewy body disease, earlier misdiagnosed as Parkinson's?

Robin Williams's widow called the disease 'the terrorist inside my husband's brain', and doctors described its spread as among the worst they had seen.

Julianne Moore won an Oscar for playing a linguistics professor with early-onset Alzheimer's in which 2014 film?

Still Alice gave Moore her first Oscar after four earlier nominations, and she dedicated the win to co-director Richard Glatzer, who died of ALS the following month.

Which actor won his second Best Actor Oscar, aged 83, for playing a man with dementia in The Father?

Anthony Hopkins plays a character who shares his first name and who cannot work out why the people in his flat keep changing.

Which country star recorded the farewell song I'm Not Gonna Miss You after revealing he had Alzheimer's?

Glen Campbell answered his diagnosis by setting off on a Goodbye Tour, with three of his children playing in the band behind him.

Alois Alzheimer, who described the disease that bears his name in 1906, was a psychiatrist from which country?

Germany was where he met Auguste Deter, a patient in her early fifties who kept repeating 'I have lost myself' and whose brain he examined after her death.

Which brain structure, essential for forming new memories, is among the first regions damaged in Alzheimer's disease?

The hippocampus takes its name from the Greek for seahorse, although the first anatomist to describe it wavered between that and a silkworm.

Which term, coined by nurse Lois Evans, names a daily spell of worsening confusion common in people with dementia?

Sundowning sets in during the late afternoon and early evening; it seems to peak in the middle stages of Alzheimer's disease and then ease as the illness advances.

Which kind of memory is usually the first to fade in Alzheimer's disease?

Recent events go first because the disease strikes early at the part of the brain that lays down new memories, which is why a wedding day can outlast yesterday's lunch.

Which metal, common in cookware, has long been suspected of causing Alzheimer's disease?

Aluminum has been studied as a possible cause for more than 40 years, and that research has produced no good evidence that it brings on the disease.

Vascular dementia, the second most common type after Alzheimer's, usually follows a series of which medical emergencies?

Strokes starve brain tissue of oxygen and glucose, so this form of the illness often worsens in sudden steps after each one rather than in a steady slide.

The word dementia comes from which language, in which it literally meant being out of one's mind?

Latin built the word from de, meaning away from, and mens, the mind, and English borrowed it as a medical term in 1806.

Which British fantasy novelist called his 2007 diagnosis with a rare form of Alzheimer's 'an embuggerance'?

Terry Pratchett had posterior cortical atrophy, which shrinks the back of the brain, and he met the news by urging people to 'keep things cheerful'.

Judi Dench and Kate Winslet both played which novelist, who developed Alzheimer's disease, in a 2001 film?

Iris Murdoch was looked after at home in Oxford by her husband John Bayley, a part that won Jim Broadbent the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Which sudden state of confusion, often triggered in older people by an infection, is easily mistaken for dementia?

Delirium develops over hours or days rather than years, and its triggers range from a urinary infection to the side effects of a new medication.

David Snowdon's long-running study of aging and Alzheimer's disease followed 678 members of which group?

Catholic nuns led such similar lives, with shared housing and little or no alcohol, that differences between their brains, donated after death, were easier to explain.

Which month is marked worldwide as World Alzheimer's Month, with World Alzheimer's Day falling on its 21st?

September was the choice because World Alzheimer's Day began on the 21st in 1994, marking ten years of the charity federation Alzheimer's Disease International.

The US 'AMBER Alert for seniors', broadcast when someone with dementia goes missing, is named after which color?

Silver was the name an Oklahoma legislator gave the scheme in 2005, and in some states the notices also flash up on roadside message signs for passing drivers.

People with which genetic condition make excess amyloid in the brain and face a raised risk of Alzheimer's disease?

Down syndrome is caused by a third copy of chromosome 21, which carries the gene for amyloid precursor protein, so the brain turns out too much of the plaque-forming peptide.

Which 1940s Hollywood star's Alzheimer's diagnosis in 1980 drew public attention and research funding to the disease?

Rita Hayworth had her early symptoms masked by her drinking, and a gala in her name is held annually in Chicago and New York for the Alzheimer's Association.

A widely used 30-point screening test for memory and thinking problems is named after which Canadian city?

Montreal is where Ziad Nasreddine created the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, a one-page test that takes about ten minutes.

The tangles that form inside nerve cells in Alzheimer's disease are made of which substance?

Tau protein builds up inside nerve cells as tangles, while a second culprit, amyloid beta, collects outside them as plaques; the two together are the hallmarks of the disease.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare dementia that can kill within months, is caused by which kind of infectious agent?

Prions are misfolded proteins that multiply by making healthy proteins misfold too, and a variant of the illness reached people through meat from cattle with mad cow disease.

Korsakoff syndrome, a memory disorder most common in long-term heavy drinkers, is caused by a lack of which nutrient?

Vitamin B1, also called thiamine, runs low in many heavy drinkers, and people with the syndrome often invent explanations to fill the holes in their memory.

Which approach to supporting people with dementia did British psychologist Tom Kitwood set out in a 1997 book?

Person-centered care grew from Kitwood's argument, in a book subtitled The Person Comes First, that medicine was neglecting what dementia felt like to those living with it.

Naomi Feil developed which method of talking with people with dementia, built on respecting feelings over facts?

Validation therapy treats whatever someone with dementia says as a legitimate expression of feeling, the opposite of an older method that kept reminding people where they really were.

Actor Chris Hemsworth learned while making a documentary that he carries two copies of which Alzheimer's risk gene?

APOE4 came to him from both his mother and his father, a pairing that makes Alzheimer's disease eight to ten times likelier than in the general population.

Donepezil and similar Alzheimer's drugs ease symptoms by slowing the breakdown of which chemical messenger in the brain?

Acetylcholine levels rise at the junctions between nerve cells when the drug blocks the enzyme that would normally clear the messenger away.

Which two-word term describes the brain's resilience to damage, linked to more years of education?

Cognitive reserve gained support from a 1992 study in which better-educated Alzheimer's patients coped just as well as others despite more advanced damage in their brains.

The 2014 documentary Alive Inside shows nursing-home residents with dementia being given which personalized item?

Music playlists brought 94-year-old Henry so vividly to life on screen that neurologist Oliver Sacks reached for Kant's line that music is 'the quickening art'.

Which women's college basketball coach retired with 1,098 career wins after an early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis?

Pat Summitt was 59 when she stepped down at Tennessee, and she went on to describe living with the disease in her memoir Sum It Up.

Which singer from Tupelo, Mississippi, scored his first number-one hit in 1956 with Heartbreak Hotel?

Elvis Presley cut the song as his first single for RCA Victor, and it reached number one on the pop chart twelve weeks after its release.

Which actress sang Over the Rainbow as Dorothy in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz?

Judy Garland received a special Academy Juvenile Award for her screen work that year, and the song itself won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Which cartoon character whistles at the wheel of a paddle steamer in Walt Disney's 1928 short Steamboat Willie?

Mickey Mouse made his official debut in the short, which Disney made after seeing The Jazz Singer, determined to produce one of the first cartoons with fully synchronized sound.

Which British band drew more than 73 million American viewers to The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964?

The Beatles' first appearance on the show came to be seen as the watershed that launched Beatlemania in America and opened the door to the British Invasion.

Which astronaut spoke of 'one small step' on becoming the first person to walk on the Moon?

Neil Armstrong was commander of Apollo 11, and it was his left boot that touched the lunar surface first, in July 1969.

Which Irving Berlin song, recorded by Bing Crosby in 1942, became the world's best-selling physical single?

White Christmas was written for the musical film Holiday Inn, won the Oscar for Best Original Song and has sold an estimated 50 million physical copies.

Which film star sang Happy Birthday, Mr. President to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in 1962?

Marilyn Monroe sang at a gala for the president's 45th birthday, held ten days before the actual date.

Which fruit, eaten daily, 'keeps the doctor away' in a proverb traced to a Pembrokeshire saying of 1866?

An apple was at the heart of the Welsh original too, which ran: 'Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread.'

Which singer's signature song My Way was written for him by Paul Anka to the tune of a French hit?

Frank Sinatra, known as Ol' Blue Eyes, saw the record stall at number 27 on the American chart, yet it became his best-known song on the Reprise label.

In which 1939 Civil War epic does Clark Gable's Rhett Butler marry Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara?

Gone with the Wind producers interviewed 1,400 unknown women in their search for a Scarlett before the part went to Leigh.

Which Oscar-winning actor revealed in a taped 2002 message that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's?

Charlton Heston followed the announcement by retiring from acting and stepping down as president of the National Rifle Association.