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PD, dementia, memory. Sue: In many textbooks dementia is mentioned as being an inevitable symptom of PD. To say this without explanation is misleading. A chance for a PWP to suffer in the future from Alzheimer is a bit greater than it is for a person without Parkinson. Another kind of progressive dementia is found in a small part of PWP's. Autopsy (search after death) has shown another deterioration in the brain of the these patients than is found in Alzheimers. In other PWP's a much milder deterioration of intellectual functions is seen. Not every deterioration in intellectual functions has the character of dementia as the word is used in common language. I was diagnosed in 1984. The first time I was on a meeting of the Dutch Parkinson Organisation I was immediately convinced that even patients with heavy symptoms could function intellectualy normal. However I never met a PWP who said his memory function was completely intact. It is my own experience that it is not simply short-term memory that fails. It is the loss of the funcion of automatically storing things in my memory without giving it conscious attention. If I want to remember next week what I did today I have to rehearse things, but having done so I don't forget them any more than I would do before being a PWP . I wrote about this earlier answering Elisabeth Leslie. I then told about a holiday 2 years ago in Turkey. I tried to learn some Turkish, which is a language so strange and with so many words which give no recognition at all, that much rote learning is necessary. It took time and rehearsal and a feeling the next day, that one had to start all over again. But in the end I knew a few hundreds Turkish words. Because for people suffering from dementia one of the first things that is lost is the ability for rote learning, this is an important fact. Maybe a parrallel exists with other functions that are yet there but need more conscious energy to be used. The loss of the abillity to do many things at the same time, is mentioned by others too. I happened to see another deteriorated function by myself some months ago. At night I had accidentally turned off all the lights and tried to go to the stairs. However I could not orient myself and feel for my way through my own house. Feeling that one particular chair did not make it possible to deduct which way I had to go, I felt totally lost till I found the light switch. Could it be possible that the writers who mention dementia as a enevitable part of Parkinson talk about those functions? If that is true, it is confusing to use the same word for it as is used for the symptoms of Alzheimer. Regards, Ida Kamphuis, 53/12+ ; Holland