Dementia and Normal Aging

Book excerpt: Age has been identified as the strongest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, and is also strongly associated with vascular dementia. With this relationship in mind, this book looks upon the challenge of dementia as establishing its true relationship with normal aging. The traditional disease model of dementia may have obscured important clues about many underlying causes and features of dementia. In this book, experts and pioneers in the fields of aging and dementia make an important contribution to the understanding of dementia by reappraising the latest research in the light of the continuum model. Evidence for and against numerous models of dementia are discussed with particular relevance to the relationship between Alzheimer's and normal aging. Ranging from molecular genetics and fundamental neurobiology to issues of diagnosis and the provision of services, this is a challenging work in its breadth and level of argument, which has far reaching implications for the study of dementia, and indeed of the mind itself. As a review of current thinking and research it will serve as an essential text for clinicians and scientific investigators.