Cognitive rehabilitation in Alzheimer s disease

Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia, affecting about 4-8% of the elderly population around the world. It is an irreversible and neurodegenerative brain disorder. AD is characterized with cognitive impairment, abnormal behavioral and personality changes, leading to dementia. While there is an obvious cognitive heterogeneity in AD patients, more specifically, two types of impairment seem to be particularly frequent in all individuals with AD that include executive function and episodic memory impairments. Whereas deficit in attention, working memory, episodic memory and executive functions can cause broad limitations in patient s activities of daily living, so cognitive training in AD patients is an important issue. Cognitive rehabilitation consist of two major approaches, restorative approach and compensatory approach. Compensatory approach includes using methods or materials to compensate cognitive deficits and educating new ways to completing daily activities. Some types of these methods consist of alarms, reminders and visual cues. Restorative approach encompasses cognitive training, cognitive stimulation and client-centered cognitive rehabilitation. Cognitive training uses tasks to train specific cognitive domain and the effectiveness of the methods depends on scheduled rehearsal. In this paper we present major methods and materials of cognitive training approach in AD patients.

Cognitive rehabilitation in Alzheimer s disease Keywords:

cognitive rehabilitation , Alzheimer , cognition , elderly , executive functions , attention