Binswanger's Disease

Binswanger's Disease

Even though I knew my grandmother for 17 years before she died my mother told me that I had never met her. According to her my grandmother had not been "herself" for years because the affects of her advanced age had basically destroyed the person she once was and turner her into a living zombie. Although humans live an average of 85 years, things such as memory loss and lack of motor control can completely change a person and in a way kill her years before she dies. Vascular Dementia has the same general symptoms as "old age" only it typically occurs in younger people. Binswanger's Disease is a specific type of vascular dementia, probably the most common form, which affects people at approximately age 60. Most people diagnosed with this disease do not live past five years of its onset(1). Currently, not much is known about Binswanger's Disease; in many ways it resembles various other neurological disorders making it difficult to diagnose. The trademark of this disease is damage to the blood vessels in the deep white matter of the brain(1),(4),(5). The pons, basal ganglia, and thalamus are typical sites for these lesions(5),(7). A Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan is one of the most reliable ways to see this damage(5),(6). However, with outward symptoms such as depression, strokes, and disease of heart valves(1),(2),(3),(5) an MRI is not typically one of the first diagnostic tool used and the disease proceeds unchecked.

My original thought surrounding Binswanger's Disease related to my mother's opinion of my grandmother; the people with the disease became different people due to the changes in their brains. In other words, one of the physical changes that takes place in the brain must somehow affect the victim's I-function effectually transforming him or her into a different individual. From the point of view that brain equals behavior and there is nothing else this analysis made logical sense. However, it seemed like a very simplistic summary of the disease's effects, and after deeper investigation into the course of the disease I realized that the answer would not be so easy. One of the facts I uncovered is that occasionally victims will partially recover and stabilize for a period of time, thus reverting to their pre-Binswanger's Disease selves(1),(5). So the I-function cannot, most probably, be destroyed in these instances since the victims return to their original behavior, even though their brains have undergone alterations.