Correlations between psychopathology, psychological test results and computerized tomography changes in senile dementia

Development of an "early" detection battery for dementia of the Alzheimer type

1. To develop a diagnostic battery sensitive to and specific for the early detection of Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia, the authors reviewed over 400 journal articles dealing with the diagnosis of A.D. or senile dementia and cognitive assessment in organic brain dysfunction and closed head injury. 2. We culled those studies that met our criteria for solid, reliable and statistically significant results and recommend the testing paradigms that most often produced good discrimination of mild AD dementia from normal senescence. 3. These include tests of language, verbal and non-verbal memory, perception, praxis, attention and reasoning. 4. The battery we assembled takes less than 1 hour to administer, requires no special equipment, and was designed as an early screen for use by psychologists, psychiatrists and other trained health care professionals; it is not intended for repeated administration, as in pharmacological or longitudinal studies.

Emotion control and cerebellar atrophy in senile dementia

New research increasingly indicates that the cerebellum coordinates and integrates a wide range of processes not confined to the motor sphere. Since satisfying correlations between affective disturbances and signs of cerebral atrophy have not been found, the relationship of CT-indicated cerebellar atrophy to certain psychopathologic indicators, in patients suffering from senile dementia, has been studied. The patients participating in the study were 21 women and 18 men with a mean age of 69.4 years. Each patient showed a definite pathologic score in at least one cerebral CT-measurement. The Spearman rank correlations between affective incontinency, lability of affect, and cerebellar atrophy suggest substantial relationships between affective symptoms and cerebellar pathology. This seems all the more remarkable since all of the various indicators of cerebral cortical and subcortical atrophy lacked to show any strong relationship to affective symptoms at all. The implications of the findings for research and clinical purposes are discussed.