Dementia is a disease of the brain that is both progressive and debilitating. It is caused by diverse illnesses of the brain and, depending on what part of the brain is effected, the disease in turn determines which emotional, psychological and physical difficulties people living with dementia (PLWD) may present. This course offers insight in the how dementia affects a person's cognition and communication. It offers knowledge of various types of dementia and their related cognitive challenges from a neuroscience perspective: affecting a person's senses, speech, communication and learning processes. It has been widely documented that PLWD have specific communication needs, dependent on their individual diagnoses, and further that carers’ and health professional's awareness and understanding of the brain and its functions often falls outside the remit of their generic training. However, an understanding of the dementia brain is important to supporting the PLWD because the disease resides in the brain and can affect the entire body. Communication is an integral core human need: the everyday activity of talk bonds people together. The ability to express one's emotions coherently and to others, make decisions, and generate and share ideas is essential to feeling part of both the local community and wider society. Whilst communication is free, there are however cost implications for communication work undertaken in dementia and indeed all health and social care settings, by virtue of the allocation of time necessary to facilitate communicating with those living with dementia on a daily, hour to hour basis. Increasing concerns have identified the inefficacy and impracticality of applying a universal, ‘one size fits all’ pathway to the care and support needs of those with dementia. This course provides knowledge, skills and strategies to communicate effectively with PLWD. Language, pragmatics and semantic difficulties are unobserved until later in the dementia disease, as opposed to early onset signs and symptoms presented in a range of different types of dementia: for example, confusion and memory difficulties. Examples can be seen in the case of Alzheimer’s disease, where the instance of PLWD trying to find the right words is common, frequently impacting on their ability to find the right words to enable them to enunciate and communicate simple everyday needs. These words are generally high frequency words such as ‘comb’, ‘brush’ and' ‘bread’, which can be replaced by words such as ‘thingy’ and ‘stuff’; once again this is often associated with the normal ageing process but it is the ever-deceasing ability to communicate as the dementia disease progresses. This course will helps students understand language, pragmatic and semantic difficulties presented in PLWD.