Demensia Ditinjau dari Sudut Neuroanatomik Fungsional

Dementia, a disorder of loss intellectual ability, may develops in any segment of age, but it occurs mainly in the elderly people. Diagnosis of dementia should be based on behavioral approach and criteria not on clinical and laboratory findings. As a neurobehavioral syndrome, dementia consists of symptoms collectively called disorder of global cognitive power, which is not fllowed by deterioration of the degree of alertness, but related to behavioral chages. Since traditionally many cognitive functions were associated to the neuropsychological and neurochemical studies contributed significant and important information in any effort to understand the pathophysiology of dementia. It is useful to classify dementia into cortical and subcortical dementia, because they can be easily distinguished by the absence of aphasia, apraxia and agnosia in the subcortical dementia. This paper will discuss what are the neuroanatomical substrates involved in dementia and how these structures play roles in pathophysiology ad dementia. Key words : dementia- functional neuroanatomy - neurobehavior - cognitive functions - cortical dementia - subcortical dementi