Dementia
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50 free Dementia trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Dementia touches almost every family sooner or later, yet most of us know surprisingly little about it. It is a family of illnesses and not a single one, it is not a normal part of growing older, and the research behind it includes some of the strangest detective stories in medicine. Most of this quiz is about the condition itself: the main types and what sets them apart, early warning signs, the tests doctors use, the researchers who made the breakthroughs, and the actors, singers and writers whose diagnoses changed how the public talks about it. A run of questions looks at caregiving, from everyday communication to the design of care homes. It suits family caregivers, care staff in training, students and anyone who simply wants to understand the subject better. One set of ten is different. It is easy, long-memory trivia about classic films, songs and sayings, written to be read aloud with an older relative or a memory-care group and pitched so that most people in the room will know the answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which 2004 romance does an elderly man read a love story aloud to a nursing-home resident with dementia?
The Notebook
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.
Q 02Which former US president announced his Alzheimer's diagnosis in a handwritten letter to the nation in 1994?
Ronald Reagan
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.
Q 03A widely used screening test for early Alzheimer's disease asks patients to draw which everyday object?
A clock
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.
Q 04Hogeweyk, a gated village with its own supermarket and pub for residents with dementia, is in which country?
Netherlands
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.
Q 05The family of actor Bruce Willis announced in 2023 that his aphasia had progressed to which brain condition?
Frontotemporal dementia
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.
Q 06Which small blue flower is the symbol of Britain's Alzheimer's Society and of Alzheimers New Zealand?
Forget-me-not
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.
Q 07Which crooner sang two farewell concerts with Lady Gaga in 2021, months after revealing he had Alzheimer's?
Tony Bennett
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.
Q 08PARO, a therapy robot used to calm care-home residents with dementia, is modeled on which baby animal?
Harp seal
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.
Q 09A 2020 study ranked early treatment of which sensory problem as the most significant way to prevent dementia?
Hearing loss
Hearing loss led the study's twelve modifiable factors, and removing it was estimated to prevent about 8% of dementia cases.
Q 10An autopsy after the 2014 death of which comedian found Lewy body disease, earlier misdiagnosed as Parkinson's?
Robin Williams
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.
Q 11Julianne Moore won an Oscar for playing a linguistics professor with early-onset Alzheimer's in which 2014 film?
Still Alice
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.
Q 12Which actor won his second Best Actor Oscar, aged 83, for playing a man with dementia in The Father?
Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins plays a character who shares his first name and who cannot work out why the people in his flat keep changing.
Q 13Which country star recorded the farewell song I'm Not Gonna Miss You after revealing he had Alzheimer's?
Glen Campbell
Q 21Which British fantasy novelist called his 2007 diagnosis with a rare form of Alzheimer's 'an embuggerance'?
Terry Pratchett
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'.
Q 22Judi Dench and Kate Winslet both played which novelist, who developed Alzheimer's disease, in a 2001 film?
Iris Murdoch
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.
Q 23Which sudden state of confusion, often triggered in older people by an infection, is easily mistaken for dementia?
Delirium
Glen Campbell answered his diagnosis by setting off on a Goodbye Tour, with three of his children playing in the band behind him.
Q 14Alois Alzheimer, who described the disease that bears his name in 1906, was a psychiatrist from which country?
Germany
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.
Q 15Which brain structure, essential for forming new memories, is among the first regions damaged in Alzheimer's disease?
Hippocampus
The hippocampus takes its name from the Greek for seahorse, although the first anatomist to describe it wavered between that and a silkworm.
Q 16Which term, coined by nurse Lois Evans, names a daily spell of worsening confusion common in people with dementia?
Sundowning
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.
Q 17Which kind of memory is usually the first to fade in Alzheimer's disease?
Recent events
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.
Q 18Which metal, common in cookware, has long been suspected of causing Alzheimer's disease?
Aluminum
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.
Q 19Vascular dementia, the second most common type after Alzheimer's, usually follows a series of which medical emergencies?
Strokes
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.
Q 20The word dementia comes from which language, in which it literally meant being out of one's mind?
Latin
Latin built the word from de, meaning away from, and mens, the mind, and English borrowed it as a medical term in 1806.
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.
Q 24David Snowdon's long-running study of aging and Alzheimer's disease followed 678 members of which group?
Catholic nuns
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.
Q 25Which month is marked worldwide as World Alzheimer's Month, with World Alzheimer's Day falling on its 21st?
September
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.
Q 26The US 'AMBER Alert for seniors', broadcast when someone with dementia goes missing, is named after which color?
Silver
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.
Q 27People with which genetic condition make excess amyloid in the brain and face a raised risk of Alzheimer's disease?
Down syndrome
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.
Q 28Which 1940s Hollywood star's Alzheimer's diagnosis in 1980 drew public attention and research funding to the disease?
Rita Hayworth
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.
Q 29A widely used 30-point screening test for memory and thinking problems is named after which Canadian city?
Montreal
Montreal is where Ziad Nasreddine created the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, a one-page test that takes about ten minutes.
Q 30The tangles that form inside nerve cells in Alzheimer's disease are made of which substance?
Tau protein
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.