Dementia’s Signs May Come Early - NYTimes.com

A newer area of study called "subjective cognitive decline"

Dementia’s Signs May Come Early - NYTimes.com

Good stuff:

“These people are sensing something, and there’s some biological signals that correlate,” Dr. Petersen said. “I think it’s real ...

Experts emphasize that many people with such complaints will not develop dementia. Some memory decline reflects normal aging, they say, and some concerns reflect psychological angst. People who forget what they wanted in the kitchen or the names of relatively unfamiliar people are probably aging normally. People who forget important details of recent events, get lost in familiar places or lose track of book or television plots may not be, especially if they have more problems than others their age.

- - -

Dr. Jessen said in diseases from arthritis to Parkinson’s, people often feel something is wrong before others notice. In most phases of dementia, family members and friends see deficits, but the disease has usually stolen the person’s ability to recognize them. But at the subjective phase, studies suggest family members may miss problems; the person may feel his mind working harder, but he still functions well.

One of Dr. Caselli’s patients, Roger Siegel, 84, has noticed problems for at least five years, and said he now remembers about 30 percent of what he would like to, and has trouble concentrating. “I take a shower and wonder did I wash that leg,” he said. In books, “many times I forget which character is which.”

- - -

Carol Miller, 61, of Rochester, Minn., part of the Mayo Clinic’s study of cognitively healthy adults, seems more concerned. A registered nurse who retired after being laid off a few years ago, she has forgotten cardiovascular and neurological vocabulary that once “I would recall very easily,” she said. “I don’t trust myself as a safe R.N. because I don’t have the knowledge anymore.”

When shopping for blueberry filling for her daughter’s birthday cake, she twice reached the checkout counter having forgotten it. And twice she has left the stove on. “I could’ve burned the house down,” she said. “That was scary, like ‘Wow, what’s the deal there?’ ”

Still, she said, “so far they tell me I’m normal.”