Attentional and executive dysfunction contribute to cognitive impairment in both Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Using functional MRI, we examined the neural correlates of three components of attention (alerting, orienting, and executive/conflict function) in 23 patients with Alzheimer's disease, 32 patients with Lewy body dementia (19 with dementia with Lewy bodies and 13 with Park...

OBJECTIVES To assess olfactory function of patients with dementia. Odour detection ability is impaired in clinical Parkinson's disease. Evidence of impaired detection in patients with clinically diagnosed Alzheimer's disease is inconsistent. No studies of olfaction have been neuropathologically validated. METHODS The olfactory function of 92 patients with dementia and 94 controls was assessed...

Objectives—To assess olfactory function of patients with dementia. Odour detection ability is impaired in clinical Parkinson’s disease. Evidence of impaired detection in patients with clinically diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease is inconsistent. No studies of olfaction have been neuropathologically validated. Methods—The olfactory function of 92 patients with dementia and 94 controls was assessed u...

Dear Editor, Lewy body dementia is a neurodegenerative disease of the elderly characterised by cognitive impairment coupled with mild parkinsonism, visual hallucinations and a fluctuating mental status.1 Diagnosis is established by autopsy or brain biopsy findings of characteristic Lewy bodies within neurons. However, one can usually identify Lewy body dementia on clinical grounds alone.1 The m...

Given the relationship between anticholinergic activity (AA) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), we rereview our hypothesis of the endogenous appearance of AA in AD. Briefly, because acetylcholine (ACh) regulates not only cognitive function but also the inflammatory system, when ACh downregulation reaches a critical level, inflammation increases, triggering the appearance of cytokines with AA. Moreov...