Front Cover; Aging of the Brain and Alzheimer's Disease; Copyright Page; Contents; List of Contributors; Preface; Acknowledgements; Section I -- Diagnosis; Chapter 1. Clinical approach to dementia; Chapter 2. Cognitive, emotional and behavioral dysfunctions in aging and dementia; Chapter 3. Interrelations among the lesions of normal and abnormal aging of the brain; Chapter 4. Age-related changes in Down syndrome brain and the cellular pathology of Alzheimer disease; Chapter 5. Measurement and imaging of cerebral function in ageing and dementia

Chapter 6. The endogenous components of the event-related potential -- a diagnostic tool?Section II -- Alterations in the Brain; Chapter 7. The current status of the cortical cholinergic system in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease; Chapter 8. Monoamines and myelin components in aging and dementia disorders; Chapter 9. Neuropeptide changes in aging and Alzheimer's disease; Chapter 10. Cortical neurochemistry in Alzheimer-type dementia; Chapter 11. Lipofuscin: characteristics and significance

Chapter 12. Ratio of pyramidal cells versus non-pyramidal cells in the human frontal isocortex and changes in ratio with ageing and Alzheimer's diseaseChapter 13. Cationshifts and excitotoxins in Alzheimer and Huntington disease and experimental brain damage; Chapter 14. Dendritic proliferation in the aging brain as a compensatory repair mechanism; Chapter 15. Neuronal cell membranes and brain aging; Chapter 16. Aging and circadian rhythms; Chapter 17. Neuronal cytoskeleton in aging and dementia; Section III -- Etiological Factors and Animal Models

Chapter 18. DNA damage, DNA repair and the genetic basis of Alzheimer's diseaseChapter 19. Transcriptional and translational regulatory mechanisms during normal aging of the mammalian brain and in Alzheimer's disease; Chapter 20. Cell-specific pathology in neural systems of the temporal lobe in Alzheimer's disease; Chapter 21. The old animal as a model in research on brain aging and Alzheimer's disease/senile dementia of the Alzheimer type

Chapter 22. Behavioral and biochemical effects of nucleus basalis magnocellularis lesions: implications and possible relevance to understanding or treating Alzhei- mer's diseaseChapter 23. Experimental studies on the induction and prevention of retrograde degeneration of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons; Chapter 24. Scrapie and its association with 'amyloid-like' fibrils and glycoproteins encoded by cellular genes: an animal model for human dementia; Chapter 25. Aluminum: a role in degenerative brain disease associated with neurofibril- lary degeneration

Section IV -- Therapeutic Strategies