What is the molecular pathology that underlies hippocampal memory decline?
- Dr Charles R Harrington, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Aberdeen, Foresterhill, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, UK; c.harrington{at}abdn.ac.uk
- Received 26 February 2009
- Accepted 5 March 2009
Over a century ago Alois Alzheimer described the importance of neurofibrillary tangles in a woman who died with dementia at the age of 55 years; plaques having already been observed in brains by Blocq and Marinesco. In the 1960s, Martin Roth and colleagues at Newcastle started to look at the pathological basis of dementia in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and identified neuritic plaques and tangles as the key determinants of clinical dementia. Although recent advances have since established the molecular basis for the pathological hallmarks of the disease, several studies have been contradictory in terms of whether it is amyloid or …
