Dementia and Memory

This volume brings together an outstanding selection of international experts to address aspects of memory changes in healthy aging and dementia. Individual chapters deal with basic science, clinical data and neural correlates of these changes in a lively and accessible fashion. Several writers take a lifespan approach to the problems, highlighting the search for early biomarkers of Alzheimers disease and its precursors. The collection can be warmly recommended to both researchers and clinicians as a source of up-to-date knowledge on this increasingly important topic. - Fergus Craik, Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Health Sciences, Canada

Lars-Gran Nilsson is Professor of Psychology at Stockholm University, Sweden. His research concerns the development of cognitive functions across the life span, in particular the development of memory. Within the Betula Project he has conducted a longitudinal study of how memory develops in adulthood and old age, and within the project Brain Child at Stockholm Brain Institute he has been engaged in research on how memory develops in children and teenagers. Nobuo Ohta is Professor of Psychology at Gakushuin University, Japan. His research interests are in the psychology of memory, cognition and learning, especially in implicit memory. Topics of ongoing work include life span memory development, false memory and amnesia.

1. Introduction: Is Alzheimers disease predictable long in advance on the basis of memory performance, L-G. Nilsson Part 1: Early cognitive signs of dementia Introduction: L-G. Nilsson and N. Ohta 2. Mild cognitive impairment and the preclinical phase of dementia: Neuropsychological and neuropsychiatric aspects, K. Palmer, M. Musicco, and C. Caltagirone 3. Dissociations between losses of memory, intelligence and processing speed in old age, P. Rabbitt 4. Rationale of the Memory Binding Test, H. Buschke 5. Controlled Learning: from the Bench to the Clinic, E. Grober Part 2: Is dementia inevitable? Introduction, L.-G. Nilsson and N. Ohta 6. How do we measure cognitive function in the oldest old? A new framework for questionnaire assessment of dementia prevalence in centenarians, Y. Gondo, Y. Masui, H. Inagaki, and N. Hirose 7. A life-span approach to dementia, A. Herlitz and S. Dekhtyar 8. Cognitive Reserve: From Theory To Intervention, Y. Stern Part 3: Memory systems and dementia Introduction, L.-G. Nilsson and N. Ohta 9. Anterograde Memory in Frontotemporal Dementia, J. R. Hodges, M. Hornberger, and O. Piguet 10. Retrograde amnesia in dementia and memory disorders: are we any nearer an understanding? M. D. Kopelman 11. Language disorders in neurodegenerative disease: Insights into the organisation of semantic memory and language in the human brain, K. Patterson 12. Differential impairments of semantic cognition in progressive vs. stroke-related aphasias, M. A. Lambon Ralph 13. What does semantic dementia tell us about semantic memory, M. Bonner and M. Grossman 14. Word-Stem Completion Priming in Alzheimer's Disease, D. P. Salmon