menti-, ment- +
(Latin: mens, mentalis; mind, intellectual faculties; mental; memory)
2. Etymology: although the origin of the concept of dementia goes as far back as the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and physicians; it was in 1901 when Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915), a German neurologist, identified the first case of what became known as Alzheimer's disease which currently describes individuals of all ages with a characteristic common symptom pattern, disease course, and neuropathology.
Delusions and hallucinations may occur. The most common degenerative brain disorder, Alzheimer disease makes up 70% of all cases of dementia. Onset is usually in late middle life, and death typically takes place in five to ten years.
Synonyms: Alzheimer dementia, presenile dementia; dementia presenilis, primary senile dementia, primary neuronal degeneration.
Alzheimer disease ranks fourth as a cause of death in the U.S., and its annual cost to the nation is nearly $100 billion.
Onset is typically insidious, with a progressive deterioration in the ability to learn and retain information. In recalling and repeating new material, the patient makes intrusion errors (insertion of irrelevant words or ideas) and resorts to confabulation (fabrication of stories in response to questions about situations or events that are not recalled).
Orientation and judgment decline; 50% of patients experience depression, 20% delusions. Agitation occurs in 70%. Numerous drugs, including many not considered psychoactive, can aggravate the symptoms of Alzheimer disease; clinical depression can mask dementia, and vice versa.
Neurologic findings may be essentially normal, but myoclonus (condition of abnormal contraction of muscles or portions of muscles), bradykinesia (slow movements), rigidity, and seizures can occur late in the disease. Death is usually due to sepsis (blood stream infection or blood poisoning) associated with urinary or pulmonary infection.
2. In law, competent to go to trial.
3. If someone is compos mentis, he/she is able to think clearly and is responsible for her/his actions: "My sister was quite old, when I last saw her, but she was definitely compos mentis."
2. A rarely used term for dementia.
From dement, to cause to become mad, raving, crazy; literally, "out of one's mind".
Legally, a form of mental disorder in which cognitive and intellectual functions of the mind are prominently affected; impairment of memory is an early sign; total recovery is thought to be impossible since organic cerebral disease is involved.
A related term is dementia praecox which is a term used to include a wide range of mental disorders that occur in early life.
It is also called adolescent insanity and schizophrenia. Dementia praecox includes three types: primary dementia, catatonia, and hebephrenia.
2. Suffering from dementia or a loss of cognitive function.
2. Unable to think or act clearly when someone is extremely worried, angry, or excited by something.
2. An acquired organic mental disorder with loss of intellectual abilities of sufficient severity to interfere with social or occupational functioning.
The dysfunction is multifaceted and involves memory, behavior, personality, judgment, attention, spatial relations, language, abstract thought, and other executive functions. The intellectual decline is usually progressive, and initially does not interfere with the level of consciousness.
A syndrome due to cumulative head blows absorbed in the boxing ring, characterized by general slowing of mental function, occasional bouts of confusion, and scattered memory loss. It may progress to the more serious boxer's dementia.
2. Dementia resulting from cumulative damage sustained over some years in boxing, resulting in slowed thinking, memory loss, dysarthria (speech that is characteristically slurred, slow, and difficult to produce; and so, difficult to understand), and other movement disorders.3. A condition seen in boxers (and alcoholics), caused by repeated cerebral concussions and characterized by weakness in the lower limbs, unsteadiness of gait, slowness of muscular movements, hand tremors, hesitancy of speech, and mental dullness.
Dementia pugilistica, also called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, pugilistic Parkinson's syndrome, boxer's dementia, and punch-drunk syndrome, is a neurological disorder which affects some career boxers and others who receive multiple blows to the head.
The condition develops over a period of years, with the average time of onset being about sixteen years after the start of a career in boxing.
Another version, "Mind animates matter." From the writings of Virgil; motto of the (Universitas Oregonensis) University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA; as well as, Rossall School, U.K.
A motto of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA.
2. A healthy mind in a healthy body.
Actually, the whole sentence is Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano. ("You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.")
Juvenal, in his Satires, suggests to us that we must pray for attainment of mens sana in corpore sano, and his phrase has found use for many centuries as the stated educational goal of many schools: to train the body as well as the mind.
Public statements by some near-illiterate college athletes suggest that the sound body is too often achieved without accompanying improvement of the mind.
