DEMENTIA RESEARCH AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGY - D EVELOPMENTS SINCE 1990

A review on some recent findings in the most important degenerative de mentias and in vascular dementia is given. The section on Alzheimer's disease covers epidemiology, subclassification, therapeutic concepts a nd the mode of progression of cognitive deficits as the disease develo ps. The nosological position of some recently defined entities is disc ussed (frontal lobe dementia, dementia in motor neuron disease, Lewy b ody dementia, asymmetric cerebral degeneration syndromes). Neuropsycho logical findings in Parkinson's disease and their close relationship t o frontal-type cognitive deficits are used to illustrate the role of c orticobasal loop systems and modulating neurotransmitter systems in ce rebral information processing. The section on aphasiology and developm ent of language gives examples of recent attempts to correlate specifi c deficits with lesion location. New functional imaging methods like P ET and functional MRI and their relevance for the renewed interest in localisationist approaches are addressed.