[Morphometric and pathologic studies of the brain in autopsied cases of Alzheimer-type dementia].

: Human brain sections were analysed by computer-assisted quantitative morphometry. The brains, autopsied at the Department of Legal Medicine, Kobe University School of Medicine and the Medical Examiner's Office of Hyogo Prefecture, included 63 cases of acute death consisting of 49 cases of non-demented and 14 cases of Alzheimer's disease (AD) or senile dementia of Alzheimer-type (SDAT). As for patients of AD and SDAT, they were clinically diagnosed at some medical facilities in their life time. Histopathological diagnosis for AD and SDAT was confirmed by the presence of abundant senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. In the non-demented control aging, a modest atrophy occurred throughout the cerebral cortex except the occipital cortex, whereas no sign of atrophy was seen in the medullary white matter. In the AD and SDAT cases, both cortical gray and medullary white matter showed significantly higher degrees of atrophy than in the controls. A further detailed study indicated that the parietotemporal association cortex was specifically affected in the demented brain as compared with the normal aging.