Alzheimer's Disease: A Typical Model for Neuropsychiatry / 신경정신의학

ABSTRACT

Even until the early 20th century psychiatry and neurology had been one. However, the chasm had been wider and wider between the two, at least in this country and the United States, until three decades before when chemical treatments were popular for schizophrenia and mood disorders. During the past three decades there have been many revolutionary progresses in neurosciences. Thanks to those developments, psychiatry and neurology are going gradually closer to each other and expected to become a single clinical specialty not far ahead. It may be called neuropsychiatry or clinical neuroscience. Alzheimer's disease seems to be a very good model bridging again the rift between the two medical specialties. It is so in terms of both from basic molecular genetics to clinical symptoms and from causes of to therapeutic interventions of cognitive, behavioral, and psychological manifestations.