This is a good question. It tells us the thing about the nature of the disease, actually – so Dementia or Alzheimer’s. So, Alzheimer’s is one type of dementia. Dementia is a bigger spectrum, about our memory and the function of the brain.
If you think the nerve cells are working together, they are not physically always in touch, but they are working with each other. So this will send a signal, and this will receive the signal – this will initiate a process. Our memory is functioning like that as well. So, we remember things because these neurons are able to communicate.
What happens in dementia cases, that communication is loosened. In time, those neurons die, because they are not able to function. The more we lose the neurons, the more we lose memory and our body function. So, in those cases, people remember old memories more than recent memories, because old memories have more.
Remember that if you have repeated something more, your brain will have that memory more often, so if you have done something today for the first time, and if you develop dementia, you won’t have that storage strong enough so you can remember again. One of the symptoms of dementia cases is that you actually lose the ability to store, so this is why you actually don’t remember, because you actually didn’t store it.
But you haven’t had the disease since you were born, so the disease appeared later, so you already have certain memories stored, and then you have repeated them in songs and rhymes. They actually also have different memories than the short-term memory, you know, the daily things. The long-term memory is stored a bit differently, so this is why we still, you know, when we have those diseases, we still remember the old things, but not the recent things.
But the more disease progresses, that part will be affected as well. Those things will be maybe forgotten, but they are so strong. So this is why, you know, people will remember their parents, but maybe not their own children, because it’s relatively recent compared to your parents’ memories.
