Bryan WilleyAlzheimer's DiseaseAlzheimer's disease is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain and people with the disease suffer from many symptoms such as memory loss, agitation, impaired judgment, and difficulty communicating with others. The different lobes affected include the parietal lobe which deals with language, the temporal lobe which deals with memory and the frontal lobe which deals with behavior and judgment. The specific type of memory loss that an Alzheimer's patient faces is declarative memory. Declarative memory is the memorization of facts such as people's names, the appearance of their faces, and important dates from our past (Marieb and Hoehn 2013). The formation of these memories can only occur when the temporal lobe or more precisely the hippocampus are capable of receiving inputs of acetylcholine. Patients with Alzheimer's disease lose this input, preventing them from creating new memories and remembering old ones (Marieb and Hoehn 2013). There are three different abnormalities that can constitute Alzheimer's disease. The first abnormality is the beta-amyloid peptide cut from APP, a membrane precursor protein (Marieb and Hoehn 2013). Too much beta-amyloid is toxic and causes plaque buildup between neurons that reduces acetylcholine levels, making it difficult to retrieve old memories and create new ones (Marieb and Hoehn 2013). Another abnormality of Alzheimer's disease is the presence of neurofibrillary tangles inside the neuron. These tangles are made of tau, a protein that abandons its stabilizing role and binds to another tau molecule forming a neurofibrillary tangle. (Marieb and Hoehn 2013). The neurofibrillary tangles then kill the neuron. The final abnormality of Alzheimer's disease is brain shrinkage. The brain is shrinking... middle of article ...... concludes that Alzheimer's disease is becoming more common and the facts support it. In just fourteen years, the annual number of deaths linked to Alzheimer's disease has increased twenty-five times. Both external sources demonstrate that Alzheimer's disease has been a problem for some time and will continue to increase if we do not find more effective treatment methods in the near future. Works Cited Marieb, EN, Hoehn, K. 2013. Human anatomy and physiology. 9th edition. Pearson Education Inc. ISPN-13: 978-0-321-74326-8. The editorial committee. High mortality due to Alzheimer's disease in 2014. Opinion pages. Available at: http://nytimes.com/2014/03/23/opinion/high-mortality-from-alzheimers-disease.htmlHoyert, DL., Rosenberg, HM. Mortality from Alzheimer's disease: updated 1999. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10459279