ABSTRACT
I ncreasingly, adults who experience a benign memory lapse, such as forget-ting where they parked their car in a crowded mall parking lot or forget-ting what they went into another room to retrieve, worry that they have Alzheimer’s disease. The amount of media airtime devoted to medical fi ndings or personal accounts of Alzheimer-related issues has expanded exponentially in the past decade and has created a heightened awareness and fear of this disease by the general public. When political fi gures (e.g., Ronald Reagan) share their diagnosis and their families discuss the challenges of the disease, the potential for this disease to strike anyone becomes diffi cult to ignore. The positive result is that increasing numbers of people are seeking information about dementia from their medical providers and a variety of sources, including the Internet, which often leads to referrals for testing. Increased numbers of individuals being tested leads to a number of benefi ts: a larger database of clinical cases to analyze, improved methods for more specifi c and reliable diagnoses, and increased treatment options. Advances in determining the underlying causes of the spectrum of dementia diagnoses are accelerating; the need for accurate and reliable methods for differentiating among diagnostic categories remains a priority for clinicians who are faced with persons and their presenting symptoms. This chapter outlines the range of diagnostic labels in dementia and related conditions, and their associated cognitive, behavioral, neuropsychological, and pathophysiological markers.
