1978 Volume 15 Issue 6 Pages 587-592
A 57-year-old woman died of an acute gastrectasia 5 years after the onset of the progressive mental deterioration. Besides fragmented mental functions, the patient had showed a characteristic psychosyndrome with akinesia, aresponsiveness and refusal to talk from relatively early stage of the disease. Some release phenomena and flexion contracture of the exrtemities were observed at the endstage, but the neurological symptoms were not manifest. The neuropathological examination revealed a large number of senile plaques and Alzheimer's neurofibrillary changes in the cerebral cortex and widespread atrophic-degenerative processes of the cerebral cortex and white matter, which were very much stressed in the frontal and temporal lobes. Namely, this case showed morphological characteristics of both Alzheimer's and Pick's disease. The clinico pathological relationship was discussed in reference to the frontal lobe syndrome as well sa to akinetic mutism or “apallisches Syndrom”. In this respect, it is to be remarked that the severe cerebral lesions were localized mainly in the frontal lobe and other association areas and the primary sensory-motor areas and their surroundings were relatively well preserved, and that the brain damages were of the nature of mild and slow-progressive one in this example.
