Alzehimer's disease a personal experience in the neurobiology of everyday

1. Maria Isabel Hernandez
Alzheimer’s
disease:
The oblivion pathway

2. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder
and the most common cause of dementia, worldwide around 50 million
people are living with this disease.
I feel personally involved in the neurobiology of this pathology
because my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
disease 10 years ago, she is currently 85 years old and I have witnessed
her entire process, which has been very complex from the beginning of
her symptoms to her current state.

3. Memory loss is one of the first
symptoms reported by patients
suffering from Alzheimer’s
disease (AD), because as we have
learned in this course, the
hippocampus is mainly affected
by the formation of amyloid β
plaques that are progressively
deposited in the brain, more
specifically in the hippocampus,
altering short-term memory that
way.
The first symptoms of this
disease appeared when
she began to forget little
things in her daily life, like
where she left the keys or
where she kept the money,
which
started to become more
and more frequent with
time.

4. As time passed, I noticed how she started to present disorientation and loss of
attention too. She used to ask me to repeat the same phrases several times or
simply asked about the same topic over and over again, however when I asked
her something related to her childhood or her younger years, she would
remember it perfectly.
This is due to the fact that patients with Alzheimer’s disease lose the
ability to retain new memories (because the impaired short-term memory),
however they are able to retain their implicit memory and remember old events.

5. Another important aspect in the process of her illness was when she presented
important changes in her behavior, sometimes she became aggressive with her
caregivers and relatives. If she went out to nearby places she could not orient
herself. I think that the microglia, astrocytes and other glia cells as professor
Manson explained are possibly involved to a lesser extent in the inflammatory
process in Alzheimer’s Disease. Amyloid β plaques can activate microglia which
leads to an increase in the cell surface expression of major histocompatibility
complex II and this inflammatory process can contribute to the worsening of the
disease.

6. As more time went by, my grandmother was no longer able to recognize her
sons, daughters and grandchildren. Working memory and long-term
declarative memory are strongly affected in Alzheimer’s disease. She then
began to speak differently, showing signs of what we know as aphasia,
which is a result of the involment of her temporal lobe, that was
progressively degenerating. This deterioration started
to affect the brain’s language centers, mainly the Wernicke area, affecting
the understanding of spoken speech and therefore alterating
communication, which was getting worse and worse.

7. Right now in 2020, my grandmother is in the late
stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Her symptoms are
severe and she lost the ability to respond to her
environment and do the daily life activities. Currently
she doesn’t hear well because at her age, she lost
the outer cells of the inner ear, so we need to speak
louder to her. Sometimes she
comes back and says my name but just for a few
minutes, then she remains silent again and returns
to her lonely pathway to oblivion.
Me and my grandma