Dementia:Significant loss of intellectual abilities, such asmemorycapacity, that is severe enough to interfere with social or occupational functioning. Criteria for thediagnosisof dementia include impairment ofattention, orientation, memory, judgment, language,motorand spatial skills, and function. By definition,dementiais not due tomajor depressionor schizophrenia. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia. Other causes include AIDS, alcoholism, brain injury,vascular dementia(damage to thebloodvessels leading to thebrain), dementia with Lewy bodies, brain tumors, drug毒性,infectionof brain, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,meningitis, Pick disease, syphilis, and hypothyroidism.
