You have full access to this open access chapter, Download reference work entry PDF
Synonyms
Definition
Presenile dementia, or early-onset dementia, is any dementia with onset before the age of 65. While it is still poorly understood, Alzheimer’s disease is the major etiology, followed by vascular dementia, and Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (Vieira et al. 2013). However, causes of presenile dementia can also include other neurodegenerative dementia, other vascular diseases, infectious disease, inflammatory and autoimmune disease, or neurometabolic disease. Although genetic etiologies are more common in presenile dementia compared with late onset (Miller 1975), the majority of cases do not have an identifiable, single genetic cause. Presenile cases have played a vital role in identifying major potential pathologies for dementias. In fact, the term Alzheimer’s disease was originally understood to be a presenile disorder, while late-onset dementia was poorly defined. Attributing the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease in a presenile population to the senile population drastically altered the field (Greicius et al. 2002).
References and Readings
Greicius, M., Geschwind, M., & Miller, B. (2002). Presenile dementia syndromes: An update on taxonomy and diagnosis. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 72 (6), 691–700.
Miller, E. (1975). Impaired recall and the memory disturbance in presenile dementia. The British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 14 (1), 73–79.
Vieira, R. N., Caixeta, L., Machado, S., et al. (2013). Epidemiology of early-onset dementia: A review of the literature. Clinical Practice & Epidemiology in Mental Health, 9, 88–95.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Zichlin, . (2017). Presenile Dementia. In: Kreutzer, J., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_1140-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_1140-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56782-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56782-2
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences