[Psychopathologic disorders at the onset of Alzheimer's disease]

The investigation of patients with Alzheimer's disease was based on the following questions: which symptoms occur at onset, which cognitive, non cognitive and neurological symptoms already appear in early stages of the disease and how frequent are they? Memory impairment was the most frequent symptom at onset. However apathy and deficits in word finding did also occur at the beginning of the disease' clinical manifestation. It is generally suggested that symptoms in mild Alzheimer's disease are confined to impairment of memory, orientation, and language. In contrast to that our results suggest that psychopathological symptoms in mild Alzheimer's disease may cover a wide range of cognitive and non cognitive deficits.