1. Created By: Tawhid, Jessie, Mellisa, and Kara December 1 st, 2011 Period: 5 A.P. Psychology

2.  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. Health Information

3.  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. Dementia

4.  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. Alzheimer’s Disease

5. Hope you learned something! The End