ABSTRACT
Kurt A. Jellinger
Institute of Clinical Neurobiology, Vienna, Austria
INTRODUCTION
With an increasingly elderly population the incidence of dementing disorders is
rapidly increasing in frequency and represents a major scientific, humanitarian,
and socioeconomic problem. Due to recent progress in genetic, molecular
biological, imaging, and neuropsychological techniques, and detection of disease
specific biological markers, the diagnosis and classification of these processes
have increased in accuracy. However, despite the establishment of diagnostic
guidelines and consensus criteria, a definite diagnosis still depends on neuro-
pathological examination of the brain at autopsy and, rarely, by biopsy. This is
particularly true for early stages of such processes, in which the validity of
clinical and neuroimaging criteria is limited. Studies of the brains of elderly
individuals without cognitive changes and in those with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
and other dementias have provided a major input for progress in our under-
standing of brain aging and the lesion thresholds for mild cognitive impairment
(MCI) and initial stages of dementia (1-16).
