“Everyone has memory disorders” From the outset at Professor Francis Eustache, memory specialist and director of studies at EPHE (Practical School of Hautes Etudes) -PSL (Paris Sciences et Lettres). At the physiological level, to encode information, you must be attentive to what you do. If your attention is not paid to the event that you must hold, you do not record, this is normal. On the other hand, there may be a dysfunction of this encoding because of a pathology and this causes abnormal memory disorders.
“Alzheimer’s disease is the most frequent neurodegenerative diseases and it always leads to memory disorders. Most often, these disorders are inaugural for the disease (at the beginning, editor’s note)” We learn the specialist. But “There is not that she can affect memory, there are many others”. Memory can also be a problem in other neurodegenerative diseases “Like the fronto-temporal lobar degeneration. In this case, memory disorders are in the background, behavioral disorders and social behaviors being the most characteristic”.
Another disease to which memory disorders are often linked: Lewy’s body syndrome, the disease that has won the ex-presenter weather Catherine Laborde in January 2025. This degenerative disease varies a lot from one patient to another and from one moment to the other, “Certain symptoms are common to those of Alzheimer’s disease, whose memory disorders but visual hallucinations are the most characteristic” specifies our interlocutor. Parkinson’s disease can also cause memory problems “But they occur later during the evolution of the disease, they are not in the foreground. These are the attention disorders that are the first to manifest themselves. “
Memory can also be affected by amnesia syndromes such as Korsakov syndrome, “an excess disorder of alcoholic beverages “, Depression, serious illnesses imposing heavy treatments such as cancer. Care, meetings at the hospital and back and forth at work are an upheaval. Their memory, which is usually very efficient, can be weakening. Finally, psychic trauma like mourning can cause memory losses. Generally, memory disorders are detected by those around them. “It is important to identify the frequency of these problems. Locate for example if the person does not know how to go to daily journeys, if he forgets things he had claimed to take care of, if she loses her words … It does not make a diagnosis, but it is worth discussing it with a doctor“Concludes Professor Eustache.
