What are the neurobehavioral features of Alzheimers Disease?
Alzheimers Disease is the most common neurodegenerative dementia in the elderly.
In typical cases, the disease process starts in the medial temporal lobe, mainly hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, so the cardinal symptom is progressive memory impairment.
Pathology then spreads to involve adjacent lateral temporal and parietal areas, causing visuospatial impairment and difficulties with naming and semantic knowledge.
Select frontal functions can be impaired early, such as set shifting.
Later in the disease course, there is global decline in cognitive skills and functional status.
There are well-described atypical variants of AD, such as PCA characterized by progressive visuospatial dysfunction, and a language variant called logopenic primary progressive aphasia.
