Considérations neuropsychologiques sur le vieillissement normal et pathologique Neuropsychopatological factors on normal and pathological aging

Résumé

L'article se propose de résumer les données normatives du vieillissement et, en rapport avec certains faits neurologiques et neuropsychologiques connus, nous tenterons de dégager une interprétation des modifications qui affectent les personnes âgées. En plus, comme les pathologies de la vieillesse occupent aussi une place importante dans l'étude du vieillissement cérébral, nous tracerons un tableau des principaux faits cliniques dans ce domaine.

SUMMARY

Amidst the psychological caracteristics of aging two aspects deserve more attention : the decline of the intelligence and the functioning of memory. There is a neuropsychological explanation for the anatomophysiological modification of the brain in old age. It is noted that the loss of neurons which caracterizes aging particularly affects the frontal and temporal regions. This fronto-temporal incidence in old age seem to be responsible for the weakening of their mental flexibility, for an accrued rigidity of their conceptualizing ability and for a loss of their memory mecanisms of the associative and organizational type. These normal organic modifications as seen in old age do not have the same involvement as cerebral organicity as such. The diagnosis, at the clinical level, is sometimes hard to achieve. There are affective and cognitive manifestations that can be found in cases of real organicity as well as normal aging. Recent researches have emphasized the need to arrive at a precise diagnosis of cerebral organicity in order to develop appropriate therapy.