Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome

The report also indicates that 42 percent of residents in assisted living facilities had Alzheimer's disease and other dementias – such as vascular dementia, lewy body dementia, mixed dementia, Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, normal pressure hydrocephalus, Huntington's disease and Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome – in 2010.

Such damage to executive function is more subtle than the severe forms of alcohol-related brain damage known as Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, in which chronic alcohol consumption causes a deficiency in thiamine that can lead to hallucinations, amnesia, psychosis and difficulty walking.

Five of the conversations took place in 2010, the year that Vidal began to suffer the effects of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, or “wet brain,” which Parini calls “a stage in alcoholism when the drinker begins to lose touch with reality.”

If not treated promptly, the brain can suffer permanent damage – usually to the ability to learn and form memories, a condition called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.