A Dialog Between Genetics, Neuropathology, and Neuropsychology

Abstract

The Handbook of the Aging Brain is a broad and encompassing handbook resource that contains research findings on how brain substrate changes with age and how these molecular and biochemical changes affect behavior and cognition in the elderly. The book contains 16 independent chapters that attempt to integrate an impressive growing knowledge on normal, abnormal, and even successful neural aging. It includes a broad spectrum of research encompassing molecular, morphological, neuropathological, and neuropsychological patterns in later life. Each chapter is written by acknowledged experts who are currently engaged as active researchers in their respective topic areas. Although the chapters have an informative nature and their readability is outstanding, the editorial work is fairly poor. No unifying themes between the chapters were orchestrated. The editors could have organized the book into sections and could have made comments as an attempt to tie together the various chapters or topics, and build chapters based upon the information provided in the preceding one. Instead, the reader is left to do this exercise on his own, and I have attempted to do so in this review.