Dementia

Dementia is not a specific disease. It is a descriptive term for a collection of symptoms that can be caused by a number of disorders that affect the brain. People with dementia have significantly impaired intellectual functioning that interferes with normal activities and relationships.

What Causes Dementia?

Dementia occurs due to loss of brain function that occurs with certain diseases. It can affect several brain functions such as memory, thinking, language, planning, behavior and judgement. Dementias are usually progressive and worsen with time. They usually are degenerative and non reversible.

Dementia Symptoms

Parkinson's Compared to Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB)

Dementia Treatment

Dementia Diagnosis

Aromatherapy for Dementia

Dementia with Lewy Bodies

Antidepressants and Dementia: Is There a Link?

Dementia Prevention

Does Depression and Anxiety Increase the Risk of Dementia?

What is Mixed Dementia?

Coconut Oil and Dementia

See more featured articles »

Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation for Dementia

Mixed Dementia Prevention and Treatment

Childhood Dementia Causes

Mixed Dementia Symptoms and Diagnosis

Childhood Dementia Signs and Symptoms

Differences Between Alzheimer's and Dementia

Migraines and Dementia

What is Dementia?

Bright Light Therapy and Dementia

Latest Dementia News and Research

New metric detects early Alzheimer’s changes in brain white matter

Alzheimer's disease has traditionally been studied as a condition that primarily affects the brain's gray matter, where neuronal cell bodies are located and some of the disease's most characteristic lesions accumulate.

5 Aug 2026

The healthiest super-agers may have one thing in common: stable cognition

A 10-year study of 1,003 older adults linked cognitive super-aging to fewer emergency visits, unplanned hospital admissions, delirium episodes, dementia diagnoses, and residential aged care placements. Maintaining cognitive performance over time showed the strongest overall association with favorable health outcomes and was linked to a 46% lower mortality risk.

5 Aug 2026

NIH funds smartphone platform to improve driving safety for teens

Dr. Jeffrey Keller, Hibernia National Bank/Edward G. Schleider Endowed Chair at LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and Sara Seifert, president of Minnesota HealthSolutions, have received a new National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award to develop an innovative digital health platform that will help parents support teenagers with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as they learn to drive.

4 Aug 2026

New study advances understanding of dementia after age 90

It may seem natural to assume that people experience cognitive decline after age 90, but until recently, researchers had limited evidence about how advanced age affects the brain.

4 Aug 2026

Exercise helps protect Hispanic adults from late life cognitive decline

Previous studies have examined the associations between adherence to LS7 and cognitive outcomes, with findings suggesting that higher LS7 scores are associated with better cognitive performance, reduced dementia risk and improved brain health.

4 Aug 2026

New 3D brain tissue model accelerates Alzheimer's drug development

How can Alzheimer's research be made faster, better, and more effective? After decades of intensive research worldwide and despite recent therapeutic advances, scientists have not managed to fully arrest the progress of the disease.

4 Aug 2026

Study connects late-life psychosis to abnormal tau protein buildup

Hallucinations and delusions that appear for the first time in midlife or later are often treated as psychiatric symptoms whose biological cause is unclear.

4 Aug 2026

Study links lower vitamin D to mood and cognitive health in adults over 85 with diabetes

Researchers studying 188 adults aged 85 years or older with type 2 diabetes found the lowest serum 25(OH)D concentrations among those with both depressive symptoms and mild cognitive impairment. Lower levels remained associated with having both conditions after adjustment for selected factors, but the cross-sectional study cannot establish causation or a benefit from supplementation.

3 Aug 2026

Daily social connections may improve long-term health and cognition

Calling a friend after a long day. Showing up to a neighbor's dinner when you'd rather stay home. Lingering a little longer in a conversation that didn't need to last.

3 Aug 2026

New AI model generates detailed maps of aging in brain regions

USC researchers have developed an approach that uses artificial intelligence to generate detailed maps that highlight differences in how distinct parts of the brain age.

3 Aug 2026

Gut microbiome shifts may begin before Alzheimer’s symptoms appear

A narrative review links reduced SCFA-producing gut bacteria and altered microbial metabolism with Alzheimer’s disease, while early evidence suggests similar changes may appear before cognitive symptoms. Mediterranean, DASH, MIND, and prudent diets are associated with beneficial microbial profiles, but direct evidence connecting diet, the microbiome, and amyloid pathology remains limited.

3 Aug 2026

Persistent financial hardship tracks with poorer memory and processing speed by midlife

Researchers linked persistent low income and financial hardship across early and mid-adulthood to poorer processing speed and verbal memory at age 53 in a British birth cohort. Neuroimaging suggested greater vulnerability to later brain atrophy among men, people from disadvantaged childhood backgrounds, and APOE-ε4 carriers, although these subgroup findings require replication.

2 Aug 2026

Researchers propose new framework to define clinical obesity

A new approach to defining obesity could help physicians better determine which patients need more intensive treatment by focusing on the effects of excess adiposity on organs and tissues rather than relying primarily on whether a person meets a set of metabolic risk thresholds.

31 Jul 2026

Early-life sugar restriction may reduce dementia risk later

Consuming less sugar in utero before birth and during the first one to two years of life was associated with a lower risk of developing dementia later in life, according to a study published July 29, 2026, in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

29 Jul 2026

A closer look at Parkinson’s brains finds tau where standard tests saw little

Researchers used single-molecule and super-resolution imaging to profile protein aggregates across six brain regions from 29 post-mortem donors, detecting high-intensity phosphorylated tau aggregates in the Parkinson’s disease putamen despite negligible conventional tau staining. PD cases with dementia showed greater tau burden than those without dementia, while the assay did not detect a PD-specific population of nanoscopic alpha-synuclein aggregates.

29 Jul 2026

THC and CBD combination rapidly reduces advanced dementia agitation

A combination of CBD and THC rapidly and significantly reduces agitation in hospice-eligible people with dementia, suggest topline results from the Phase 2 LiBBY (Life's End Benefits of cannaBidiol and tetrahYdrocannabinol) clinical trial.

28 Jul 2026

Can Alzheimer's genes predict who becomes a SuperAger?

A study on SuperAgers shows exceptional memory isn't solely due to lower Alzheimer's genetic risk, highlighting the role of biological and lifestyle factors.

28 Jul 2026

UC Davis researcher receives grant to study perceived cognitive aging

University of California, Davis Professor of Neurology Sarah Tomaszewski Farias has been awarded a $3.3 million five-year grant from The National Institute on Aging to study if cultural differences affect how people perceive cognitive changes as they age.

27 Jul 2026

Amyloid beta misfolding predicts Alzheimer's years before symptoms appear

Widely used Alzheimer’s biomarker P-tau 217 reliably detects the disease only at the clinical stage. The protein misfolding of amyloid beta indicates an increased risk years earlier.

27 Jul 2026