[Various quantitative characteristics of the pathoarchitectonics of the cerebral cortex in Pick disease and Alzheimer disease].
On the basis of the study of the pathological architectonics of 6 brain hemispheres in Pick's disease (PD) and 4 hemispheres in Alzheimer's disease (AD), the author presents data on changes in the size of the surface of the hemispheres on the whole and of individual areas and compares them with the mean figures. It is concluded that the degenerative, atrophic process in both groups of presenile dementia involves the entire brain cortex: the indices of the area of the entire hemisphere in all the cases studied were below the mean values. The surface of the cortex was shrinked in both phylogenetically new areas (inferior occipital, frontal and temporal) and phylogenetically older regions (pre- and postcentral, occipital), as well as in the limbic and insular regions. In all cases the general regularity was maintained: a decrease in the size of the entire hemispherical surface as well as individual regions was more expressed in AD than in PD. The exception to this rule was 1 case of PD in which all parameters were very low which may be associated with the duration of the disease (12 years). There was a certain asymmetry between the size of the hemisphere on the whole and of its individual regions. No correlation was found between the degree of macroscopic atrophy of the convolutions and the severity of pathological achitectonic changes in cortical formations.