Older people with predominantly cognitive symptoms such as loss of memory, and vagueness, as well as prominent slowing of movement and reduced or slowed speech, were sometimes misdiagnosed as having dementia when further investigation showed they were suffering from a major depressive episode.[7] This was an important distinction as the former was untreatable and progressive and the latter treatable with antidepressant therapy, electroconvulsive therapy, or both.[8] In contrast to major depression, dementia is a progressive neurodegenerative syndrome involving a pervasive impairment of higher cortical functions resulting from widespread brain pathology.[9]