Question: Does where you are cultured affect memory loss and dimentia?

Nadine Mirza answered on 7 Nov 2018:

This is an excellent question!
Our culture really impacts what our brain learns: the languages around us, the information we get from education systems, history, literature, laws, discoveries, traditions and customs, the kinds of behaviours that are or are not acceptable within our culture, even the simple way we write street addresses on envelopes or how in some countries there are seasons by name, whereas in other they have no specific words.
All of this means that if dementia happens, even if everyone has the same symptoms, it can show in different ways. Dementia can cause memory loss, but it can also do other things, like change people’s behaviour or personality, cause issues speaking or reading, cause hallucinations, really so much.
Now imagine someone with dementia who used to shake hands with people when they met but since their disease they now go in for big bear hugs with total strangers.
In some cultures this is totally okay! They would fit in and it might feel normal. In other cultures people might get weirded out if you hug them out of the blue!
Culture can effect what people might hallucinate- people from different cultures will hallucinate different things. It’s been shown that people from Western cultures tend to hallucinate negative things but those from Eastern cultures hallucinate more positive or neutral things.
Cultures that promote education and thinking also lead to people with less severe dementia because those cultures keep brains active. Some cultures lead to people needing to know more than one language and science has shown the more languages you know the less likely you are to develop dementia.
In these little ways culture really impacts dementia and memory loss.