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Anatomy of Pathological Alterations in Alzheimer’s Disease

  • Chapter
Molecular Mechanisms of Dementia

Part of the book series: Contemporary Neuroscience ((CNEURO))

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Abstract

Even by inspection of the gross brain, it is evident that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) neuropathological changes do not occur randomly or uniformly, but instead target the medial temporal lobe and association cortices of the temporal and parietal areas (1–3). It might be expected, given the complex topography of brain architecture, that on finer examination, this distribution would show a pattern of vulnerability definable at the level of neural systems, cytoarchitectural fields, and even specific lamina within cytoarchitectural fields. Our anatomical studies of AD neuropathology have shown that this is indeed the case. Neurofibrillary tangles (NFT), senile plaques (SP), and neuronal loss affect individual cytoarchitectural areas and laminae in an extraordinarily specific and selective manner. Based on application of neuroanatomical principles and extrapolation of connectional data from the nonhuman primate experimental system, we have suggested that these lesions destroy major feed-forward and feedback projections, leading to disruption of neural systems related to memory and cognition (4). In this chapter, I will briefly review the major themes of the anatomical alterations in AD from the perspective of the studies we have carried out over the last decade.

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Authors
  1. Bradley T. Hyman
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Genetics and Aging Unit, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA

    Wilma Wasco  & Rudolph E. Tanzi  & 

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Hyman, B.T. (1997). Anatomy of Pathological Alterations in Alzheimer’s Disease. In: Wasco, W., Tanzi, R.E. (eds) Molecular Mechanisms of Dementia. Contemporary Neuroscience. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-471-9_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-471-9_13

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-5889-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-59259-471-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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