[Clinical basis for the relation between various age-related mental characteristics of the late middle-aged and the atrophic process in the brain].

Observations of normal old people and studies of senile psychopathology and psychoses give one grounds to think that there are certain connections between the features of senile psychics and symptoms of senile dementia. Some features of the senile psychics (the specificity of psychopathological syndromes, deterioration of the sensation of space and time reality, impoverishment of concrete sensual conceptions with retention of more general ones) that manifest as hints and tendencies in normal physiological senility become fully developed and complete in senile dementia. It is believed that central to these features of normal senility and senile dementia are common changes of the cerebral tissue.