Late-Life Anxiety and Cognitive Impairment: A Review

Anxiety disorders in older adults: a comprehensive review

“…Clinicians working with older adults who may be experiencing cognitive decline should also be encouraged to seek corroborating information from caregivers as well as to conduct behavioral observations. [71,164] Information about distinguishing agitation from anxiety may also be useful for clinicians. Experts in dementia should be consulted to develop behaviorally specific descriptions that could clarify these distinctions in older adults.…”

Cholinesterase Inhibitors as a Treatment for Post-Stroke Anxiety: A Case Report

“…We know that certain areas of the thalamus, such as the anterior thalamus and the dorso-medial nucleus of the thalamus play important roles in information triaging from sensory input to the prefrontal cortex, which is why information-processing difficulties are quite common with such a lesion [18]. It is very common to see anxiety in the context of cognitive disorders [6,7]. Although we cannot rule out the possibility of anxiety being also triggered directly by the disruption of serotonergic pathways, his response to donepezil suggest a role of cholinergic transmission in this syndrome.…”

“…However, links between anxiety and deficits cognitive function have been proposed, with reports of a high prevalence of anxiety among those diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment [6,7]. Deficits in attention and executive functioning have been demonstrated post-stroke even in those with vascular cognitive impairment without dementia and was found to result in significant impairment in daily functioning [8].…”

Anxiety in old age and dementia - implications for clinical and research practice

“…Anxiety is also increasingly recognized (independently from depression) as a common symptom in older adults individuals living with various aetiologies of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body disease, posterior cortical atrophy, dementia associated with Parkinson's disease, and in subjective and mild cognitive impairment, tending to result in poorer quality of life, problematic behaviours, limitations in activities of daily living, nighttime awakening and poorer neuropsychological performance [43,65,69,[77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85]. The relationship between anxiety and dementia is however both complex and controversial with overlap between the symptoms of anxiety and dementia and other behavioral and psychological problems such as agitation and depression [10,12,43,62,65,71,73,77,82,[86][87][88].…”