Introduction to Neurodegeneration: The Molecular Pathology of Dementia and Movement Disorders

Most textbooks on neurodegenerative disorders have used a classification scheme based upon either the clinical syndromes or the anatomical distribution of pathology. In contrast, this book takes a different approach by using a classification based upon molecular mechanisms, rather than clinical or anatomical boundaries. Major advances in molecular genetics and the application of biochemical and immunocytochemical techniques to neurodegenerative disorders have generated this new approach. Throughout most of the current volume, diseases are clustered according to the proteins that accumulate within cells or in the extracellular compartments or according to a shared pathogenetic mechanism, such as trinucleotide repeats that are a feature of specific genetic disorders.