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Cognitive problems refer to difficulties in thinking, focusing, remembering, planning, perceiving, and understanding. Common problems include ADHD/ADD, Alzheimer’s disease, memory loss from stroke or medication, menopause, mental illness, chronic stress, and sleep disorders. Many people can experience cognitive problems, and more research is needed to find ways to restore function.
Cognition is a general concept, having to do with how humans or other sentient beings think, focus, remember, plan, perceive, and understand. Cognitive problems, therefore, are any problems in which one of these actions is impaired. Given the vast scope of things that cognition involves, one can therefore understand why listing the most common problems with cognition is extremely difficult. So many things can briefly or permanently impair cognition that it may be difficult to judge exactly which of these things is more common. At the very least, it’s helpful to discuss some of the more common cognitive problems.
Since part of cognition is ‘focus’, it’s no wonder conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD/ADD) could be among the most common cognitive problems. Nearly 5 percent of American adults suffer from the condition and it can affect about the same percentage in school-age children. In school settings, this is approximately one or two children per class who may have ADHD. This disorder illustrates an important point regarding cognition; it is clearly not associated with intelligence, since many of these children are highly intelligent. Yet ADD/ADHD can have a huge effect on performance and easily convince children or adults that they are not intelligent because they have to try to compete with the work of others without having an important cognitive ability.
Another of the cognitive problems that is frequently discussed is the damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease. The disease gradually or rapidly deteriorates memory and also affects other cognitive areas. By the time people reach their mid-60s, they have about a 10% chance of getting this disease, and this percentage increases with age, so that by age 85 there is about a 50% chance of being affected by Alzheimer’s. It’s not just this disease that can affect memory; people can suffer from memory loss from a stroke, from the medications they take, and from conditions such as chemo brain, which affects people with cancer.
In fact, a variety of diseases, conditions, or medications can cause cognitive problems. Menopausal women, for example, often report cognitive impairment. People with mental illnesses, even when treated with medications, can experience difficulties in one or more areas of cognition, and chronic stress affects the ability to do things like plan or remember effectively. Stroke sufferers can have a significant impact on language processing, memory, concentration, and other areas. Insomnia and other sleep disorders play a role in creating cognitive problems such as lack of concentration, impaired memory, and an inability to plan effectively.
What these examples say about cognitive problems is that many people can experience them, in the short or long term. Cognition at maximum capacity is a fragile thing that can be easily reduced by a wide variety of factors. More studies in this area are clearly needed to understand how humans can better live with cognitive impairment or find ways to restore function.
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