#dementia

• Abalienation — The act of alienating or the state resulting from it; mental alienation, derangement of the mind, or loss of cognitive psychological faculties. In Latin medical terminology and early neurology textbooks, 'abalienatio mentis' designated a global collapse of intellectual functions, serving as a conceptual predecessor to the modern terms dementia, psychosis, or severe psychic dissociation.
• To abdicate — In a forensic and psychopathological context, the term describes the voluntary or forced act by which a person relinquishes prerogatives, rights, or duties due to mental incapacity, alienation, or severe cognitive decline (such as senile dementia). In classic psychology, the verb also defines the pathological relinquishment of the ego's conscious control over impulses, drives, or volition (abdication of the will or abulia).
• Alzheimer's — The name of a progressive and irreversible neurodegenerative disease, representing the most common cause of dementia in older adults, clinically characterized by memory loss, severe cognitive decline, and behavioral changes; a medical eponym structurally named in honor of the German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer. This condition is pathologically marked by the accumulation of beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in brain tissue, leading to neuronal destruction and cortical atrophy.