Mircocircuitry for Short-Term Memory and Its Relationship with Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that accounts for more than two-thirds of all cases of dementia. The most important risk factor for AD is age, followed by an APOE4 genotype. A 2007 report released by the Alzheimer's Association estimated that more than 5 million Americans are currently diagnosed with AD, while a Delphi consensus study projected that the global prevalence of AD will quadruple by the year 2040 to over 80 million cases in total. Just as this disease is often devastating at the individual and family levels are high prevalence of AD means that it is also economically and societally burdensome. Indeed, AD represented the third most costly health condition in the USA in 2000, and is of growing financial relevance for health policy planning in other industrialized and developing nations [4-6]. Perhaps due to mounting evidence regarding the gravity of the situation, there has been a crescendo of research interest in AD over the past decade, with 50% more papers published on the topic in the year 2007. Throughout this period, one major area of research in AD has focused on the cognitive impairments exhibited by patients.

Author(s): Hao Li

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