[Cinema and Neurocognitive Disorders]

Abstract

Cinema is a visual art which vividly depicts human life. Since human life is supported by memory, a number of movies tackle memory disorders including total life amnesia. In addition, dementia or neurocognitive disorder is one of the popular subjects in cinema. Two movies are introduced in this review. The first one, My Wife's Illness, depicts the story of a pediatrician's housewife who suffers dementia with Lewy bodies. She complains of significant visual hallucinations and delusions, which torments her husband. The second one, Still Alice, portrays a university professor of linguistics. Interestingly, her first symptom is word-finding difficulty. She shows rapid progression of Alzheimer's disease. During the course of her cognitive impairment, she develops symptoms including mirror sign and suicidal ideation. The problem of truth-telling for Alzheimer's disease is also discussed in this film.