Abstract
Sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was first described by the physician Alois Alzheimer (Fig. 2.1a) as an insidious and slowly progressive neurodegenerative disorder of the human central nervous system (CNS) (Alzheimer 1906; Alzheimer et al. 1995). Clinically, its earliest sign is a subtle decline in memory functions in a state of clear consciousness. Intellectual and practical skills gradually worsen, and personality changes manifest themselves, followed by deterioration of language functions, impairment of visuospatial tasks, and, in the end, dysregulation of autonomic functions and dysfunction of the motor system in the form of a hypokinetic hypertonic syndrome (Albert et al. 2011; Morris et al. 2014). Both the tempo of the cognitive decline and the duration of the disease as well as neurological symptoms can vary considerably from one individual to another (Franssen et al. 1993).
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Braak, H., Del Tredici, K. (2015). Prologue. In: Neuroanatomy and Pathology of Sporadic Alzheimer's Disease. Advances in Anatomy, Embryology and Cell Biology, vol 215. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12679-1_1
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