Communication disorders in normal aging and dementia

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Duisburg-Essen, course: Language and the brain, language: English, abstract: People often do not like to think about the prospects of growing old although everybody will be affected and nobody can evade aging. Because of improved medical care, physical fitness and healthy nutrition the life expectancy of our world population increases. Hence there will be more elderly in the future than ever before. For a long time people wrongly associate aging with disease, and therefore this paper compares health aging with pathological aging, in this case dementia. Even the prevalence of syndromes such as dementia is dramatically increasing worldwide. Patients with dementia are the fastest growing neurobehaviorally disordered population and that is why the subject is very topical and interesting. First of all the issues normal aging and dementia are explained separately. The different characteristics are investigated on several levels which are general facts, communication disorders and causes. Furthermore a comparison of both issues is given in order to emphasis the differences. As a result follows a conclusion.