Cognitive Impairment

Dementia (a decrease in cognitive ability, also known as cognitive impairment), is one of the most common neurological disorders. It is estimated to impact 30 to 40 million people worldwide. By the year 2050 this number is expected to triple worldwide by 2050 due to aging of the population, shifts in demography, and lack of treatment. The estimated costs associated with dementia may exceed $1.1 trillion. Two leading causes of cognitive impairment are Alzheimer’s disease and vascular cognitive impairment. They may account for as many as 80 percent of cases. Individuals suffering from dementia often have a mixture of the two conditions. Wikipedia describes cognition as a term for a set of mental abilities and processes related to knowledge, attention, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language, etc.. These crucial abilities tend to slowly slip away in a brain with dementia or cognitive impairment.