Neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease

Professor Kenneth Kosik discusses some of the brain regions specifically associated with Alzheimer's disease, including the hippocampus, amygdala, and entorhinal cortex.

There are regions of the brain that are specifically affected in Alzheimer’s disease and they include the hippocampus, the amygdala the entorhinal cortex, and the pathology showing up in those regions tends to correlate to what we see clinically. So the hippocampus is thought to be a memory part of the brain, and indeed individuals with Alzheimer’s have memory trouble, the amygdala is a part of the brain that is involved in emotion, and emotional dysfunction is a major component in Alzheimer’s. Tangles also affect deeper structures down in the brainstem, which control our sleep/wake cycles, and indeed it is a well-known complaint of Alzheimer’s disease to have a loss of their normal sleep cycles.