Difficulty maintaining attention and concentration begins to occur very early in the course of Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease
A neurological disease that affects memory and behaviour. It is characterized by beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain. There is no known cause but genetics and lifestyle are thought to play a role. and with Lewy Body dementia. This can be a problem for the person you care for at any stage of their disease, but typically will get worse as the disease progresses. As a result, the person you care for sometimes will have difficulty with conversation. They may lose their train of thought when speaking, they may walk away or they may start doing something else in the middle of a conversation. The person you care for may also have trouble completing activities. They may become easily distracted by noise, people or they may fixate on another object.

As dementia progresses, and particularly as the frontal lobes become impaired, people with dementia can be highly distractible, meaning they have increasingly difficulty staying on task. This severely limits their ability to learn new things and perform tasks that they had performed competently in the past.

When attention suddenly becomes impaired, the person with dementia might have some underlying medical illness. That is because sudden changes in cognition Cognition
The mental processes associated with knowing and understanding thoughts and perceptions about one's environment., with inattention, is what happens with delirium, and delirium usually has an underlying medical cause (which is especially often seen in people with dementia as a side effect Side effect
An undesired effect of a drug treatment that may range in severity from barely noticeable, to uncomfortable, to dangerous. of medications).

In today's busy world, keeping track of symptoms can be a challenge to say the least. That is why we have developed SymptomGuide^TM. By taking a more active role you can better understand how a symptom is affecting everyday life and you can communicate this knowledge with others involved.