Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Jun 21;8(1):959-969.
doi: 10.3233/ADR-230196. eCollection 2024.

Clinical Heterogeneity in Alzheimer's Disease: A Possible New Amnesic Phenotype

Carlo Abbate  1 , Alessia Gallucci  1 , Pietro Davide Trimarchi  1 , Emanuela Piacquadio  1 , Giulia Caramanti  1 , Anna Parma  1 , Giorgio Giulio Fumagalli  2 , Silvia Inglese  3 , Paola Maria Rita Parisi  1 , Federica Tartarone  1 , Fabrizio Giunco  1
Affiliations
Review

Clinical Heterogeneity in Alzheimer's Disease: A Possible New Amnesic Phenotype

Carlo Abbate et al. J Alzheimers Dis Rep. .

Abstract

We rediscovered a phenotype of AD known in the early 1900s as presbyophrenia, but then forgotten, and renamed as confabulation-misidentification phenotype. The phenotype includes diencephalic amnesia whose prototype is Korsakoff syndrome. The main features are anterograde and retrograde amnesia with marked disorientation and confabulation, executive impairments, reduced insight and attention deficits, misidentification, minor hallucination and other delusions, behavioral disturbances, and early anxiety. In this article, we summarize what we have discovered about the new phenotype and what is still missing to confirm this diencephalic variant of AD.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Korsakoff syndrome; confabulation; diencephalic amnesia; misidentification; presbyophrenia.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Abbate C, Trimarchi PD, Rotondo E, Inglese S, Nicolini P, Rossi PD, Arosio B, Mari D (2016) Spontaneous confabulations in amnestic-mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease: A new (yet old) atypical variant? Neurocase 22, 451–460. - PubMed
    1. Abbate C, Trimarchi PD, Fumagalli GG, Gallucci A, Tomasini E, Fracchia S, Rebecchi I, Morello E, Fontanella A, Parisi P, Tartarone F, Fabrizio Giunco, Ciccone S, Nicolini P, Lucchi T, Arosio B, Inglese S, Rossi P (2023) Diencephalic versus hippocampal amnesia in Alzheimer’s disease: The possible confabulation-misidentification phenotype. J Alzheimers Dis 91, 363–388. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Berrios GE (1985) Presbyophrenia: Clinical aspects. BJPsych 147, 76–79. - PubMed
    1. Berrios GE (1986) Presbyophrenia: The rise and fall of a concept. Psychol Med 16, 267–275. - PubMed
    1. Zervas IM, Fliesser JM, Woznicki M, Fricchione GL (1993) Presbyophrenia: A possible subtype of dementia. J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol 6, 25–28. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources