Cognitive Impairment and Survival after a Natural Disaster: Lessons Learned from Life Experiences in the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011

Behavioral neurology is a subspecialty of neurology that investigates the neurological basis of human behavior and cognitive function. Recently, dementing diseases have become so common that their behavioral abnormalities are now being investigated with reference to brain damage. During a big disaster, which can critically affect the human population, people should utilize their brains fully in order to survive, that is, to understand the situation around them, to make a proper judgement, and to decide their behaviors; these are associated with brain functions. However, disaster medicine is focused mainly on the environment, with the underlying assumption that brain function is always normal, and thus judgement and behavior remain normal. By contrast, "dementia medicine" does not always consider dementia in determining peoples' behaviors during the disaster. The author believes that approaches to brain-based disaster medicine and disaster-associated dementia medicine have not been fully integrated nor even investigated. Herein, the author focuses on reconstruction support after the Great East Japan earthquake in 2011, from an academic perspective, with particular respect to behavioral neurology based on his own experiences.