ABSTRACT
The differential diagnosis of early dementia versus aging is a challenge since normal aging can be accompanied by declines in memory and other cognitive functions and dementia of the Alzheimer type begins insidiously. A diagnosis of dementia must be made in the context of normal aging since dementia typically occurs in the elderly. Thus, an understanding of the cognitive and memory changes which are associated with normal aging are a prerequisite to both the understanding and differential diagnosis of dementia. Retrieval as opposed to storage deficits have been inferred from the well-established finding that aging has small effects on recognition memory but large effects on recall, which requires active memory search and retrieval. Although several neuropsychology laboratories are in the process of collecting neuropsychological control data for the normal elderly, very little has yet been published.
