The very name Alzheimer is sure to bring a shudder. Thirty to forty million people are now afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, a degenerative brain disorder that strips its victims of their identity and leaves families bereft and social services strained. Despite considerable research, the underlying causes of Alzheimer's disease remain shrouded in mystery. So, too, does the man after whom it was named. Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915) was practicing medicine at the Frankfurt Asylum in 1901 when he met a patient, who would become known as "Auguste D.," whose condition perplexed and intrigued him....

Dementia of Alzheimer type (DAT), multiinfarct dementia (MID) and dementia occurring in the course of Parkinson's disease (PD +D) now make up one of the largest categories of chronic diseases in the elderly. In addition to the burden those illnesses impose on the affected individuals and their families they consume large socio-economic re sources. In the light of all the above mentioned features, it seemed to us that a Symposium on behalf of the 125th Anniversary of Birth of Aloys Alzheimer was particularly well-suited to help to advance research on Alzheimer's disease and other dementias....

In the last two decades imaging of the brain, or neuroimaging, has become an integral part of clinical and research psychiatry. This is due to recent advances in computer technology, which has made it relatively easy to generate brain images representing structure and function of the central nervous system. Currently used clinical diagnostic imaging modalities, such as X-ray computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), provide predominantly anatomic information. CT images reflect X-ray attenuation distribution within the brain, whereas MRI signals depend primarily on proton...

Imaging procedures have been used for many years and are becoming increasingly important in a number of medical disciplines. This is due to recent technological advances, primarily computerization. The meth ods employed in CNS diagnostics are collectively referred to as "neu roimaging" and include procedures for investigating both cerebral morphology and cerebral function, such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomogra phy (PET), and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). Topographic mapping of electroencephalograms (EEG) and evoked...

From its discovery in 1929 by Hans Berger until the late 1960s, when sensory visual and auditory evoked potentials were dis covered and became popular, the EEG was the most important method of neurophysiological examination. W-ith the advent of computer technology in the 1980s, it became possible to plot the potential fields of the EEG onto models of the scalp. This plot ting of information as neuroimages followed the structural and functional techniques of Cf, MRI, PET and SPECf. The success of this method, which began in the early 1980s, has led to the brain mapping of EEGs and EPs being...