There is an interview in The Daily in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/podcasts/the-daily/why-do-some-memories-survive-dementia.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Her father, in his late 80s, fell and hit his head and had a brain bleed that led to vascular dementia. He retained some memories including one from childhood involving a canary escaping. But he lost a lot of others and in particular, never understood that he was home and so he kept wandering and feeling very agitated that he needed to leave and go somewhere. After his death, the journalist showed a researcher his brain scans and and the researcher pointed to the damage in the hippocampus which is where memories are formed and either sent to “long term storage” or discarded. Apparently, this is the same area that processes information about orientation to place or feelings of “familiar” vs “unfamiliar” place.
This is exactly the area of the brain where his brain bleed happened. So, not being able to understand you are home, not being able to recognize your loved ones, are likely associated with damage to this area. This in turn is associated with chronic feelings of disorientation and restlessness. Interesting.
My dad had mixed dementia with bvFTD and never had the “I want to go home” behavior and his wandering was minimal. But he did have childhood memories that surfaced strongly.
My mom's physician explained that what is called "short-term memory loss" is the inability to form memories and that it is caused by damage to the part(s) of the brain in which memories are formed. The person isn't, strictly speaking, "forgetting"; the person never knew the thing. Knowing why this was happening to my mom provided some consolation, to me if not to her.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/science/dementia-memory-brain-injury.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
From the piece:
What I am saying is that the death had come and gone. But I still felt a little stunned by what had preceded it, nearly five years of trying to manage my father’s impulsiveness and confusion.
Our coping mechanisms were elaborate: patrolling the neighborhood, collecting him, distracting him by planning trips we would never take. Sometimes arguing with him was so exhausting that we drove him to the airport and let him walk up to the terminal, then waited for him to return sheepishly to the car.
On one particularly hopeless day, my husband taped a note on the inside of the front door.
YOU LIVE HERE, it said.
DON’T MOVE.
WE LOVE YOU.
We regaled our friends with funny stories, but let’s be honest — it was a battle. We were desperate for sleep; my mother was so worn out trying to keep him from leaving that she occasionally ended up in the hospital herself. Finally we called in a locksmith to put up padlocks on the insides of the doors to keep him from leaving in the night.
His death brought an end to this circus. The house quieted. We were grieving, but there was something else. What in the world had just happened to us?
That's why when they say they want to go home it's often the home that they grew up in with their parents and not the home they're in now.
Or in some cases not recognizing their spouse as they're remembering them as they looked in their younger years.
The brain is a fascinating thing for sure.