ABSTRACT
Dementia refers to a heterogeneous group of degenerative disorders characterized by progressive global cognitive decline and usually accompanied by neuropsychiatric manifestations in both affective and behavioral realms. The cognitive deterioration of dementia has an insidious onset and a progressive course. It may affect memory, language, visuospatial construction, and executive functions such as abstraction, calculation, problem-solving, motor sequencing, planning, recognition, and praxis. The affective component of dementia is manifest as depression, mania, anxiety, emotional liability, or personality change. Apathy and abulia are also characteristic affective changes of dementia. In addition to the progressive cognitive decline and affective dysregulation, behavioral disturbances including psychosis, altered sleep-wake cycle, agitation, wandering, aggressivity, repetitive vocalizations, and resistance to care are common in dementia.
