Final answer:
Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a decline in cognitive abilities, including memory and thinking skills, often occurring between normal ageing and dementia. Engaging in stimulating activities and cognitive rehabilitation can help mitigate its progression into more severe forms like dementia. Diagnosis can be aided by a mental status exam.
Step-by-step explanation:
A slight but noticeable and measurable decline in cognitive abilities, including memory and thinking skills, is known as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). MCI is a state between normal ageing and dementia where an individual's mind is functioning less well than would be expected for their age. Symptoms may include disruptive memory loss, confusion about time or place, difficulty with planning and executing tasks, poor judgment, and personality changes. While our crystallized intelligence may remain stable or improve with age, our fluid intelligence, which includes information processing abilities, reasoning, and memory, begins to decline in late adulthood>.
Research has shown that adults who engage in mentally and physically stimulating activities experience less cognitive decline and have a reduced incidence of MCI and dementia. Similarly, cognitive rehabilitation can offset mild cognitive impairment, mitigating its evolution into dementia. Environmental and nutritional factors can also influence the risk and progression of cognitive impairments like Alzheimer's disease, a form of dementia characterized by severe forgetfulness due to brain plaques and cell death. The mental status exam is a tool used to assess the cognitive functions that may be affected by MCI.