Male presenter:
The first area of the brain we’re going to look at, are the temporal lobes. This area of the brain is one of the first areas to be affected by dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease. The inner temporal lobes are where memories for things we see and hear are stored.
Carer 1:
If for example he goes to his day centre, he’ll come in and he’ll say, ‘Right, what have you been doing today?’ so I tell him, and then it’s two or three minutes later, ‘What have you been doing today?’ and I’ll tell him again and he seems to get stuck on certain things and once he’s in that mode, he’s going to say it hundreds of times. It was noticeable in the beginning that he was losing whole conversations and repeating himself a lot and it’s been sort of very, slowly progressively worse.
Sufferer 1:
This problem I’ve got … but it’s not on a regular basis. It's like...it goes so far and then it stops and then it goes and starts again after that. It seems to gradually come back and then it goes the other way as well...it gradually fades away.
Male presenter:
Recent memory is kept temporarily in this area and then stored deeper in the brain as long term memory. You may have noticed that in the example, and also from your own experience, the memories for things that happened many years ago are often remembered much better than things that happened more recently.