Page 41 - Changes and Challenges

Dementia
Changes and Challenges
How does it look? It has a chocolate colour and the right shape. Imagine if it
was green? I think you would think twice before eating it.

Does it smell like chocolate? Not everything that has a chocolatey colour will
taste like chocolate.

Now we take a bite. What is its temperature? Is it nice and cool or hot straight
from the oven? Is it pleasant or will it burn us?

What sound does it make? A nice crisp crunching sound or the sound of a
soggy piece of bread? What texture do we feel in our mouths as we chew?

Now the flavour. Is it sweet? A sour ‘chocy’ biscuit would not be expected.

Now as we chew most of the flavour of our chocolate biscuit is coming from
our sense of smell.

All these sensory inputs go toward us enjoying our chocolate biscuit. Now
what happens if one aspect is out of synch or does process normally? For
example, what if our brain doesn’t synch the olfactory data as we chew with
the taste? Our biscuit has lost most of its flavour!
Now to ask that ‘Shakespearean’ question “Would a rose by any other name
smell as sweet?” I think not. Especially as we would have to taste it (thorns an
all) to get the sweet sensation.

To summarise, our senses are interpreted together, and a ‘corruption’ with
one may impact across others and impair our experience of the environment.

Conditions like Hyperacousis (page 29) exist and affect a significant part of our
population, and presumably similar conditions exist across all our senses. The
conditions seem to be more caused by neural degeneration, than physical
sensory receptor damage. The implication being people with Dementia, and
other degenerative conditions of the brain would likely develop these
conditions. Yet this group of people would likely have their dismissed because
they have Dementia. An idea contrary to logic and the UNCRPD (page 4).

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