Recent clinical anatomical and experimental studies seem to indicate that senile dementia is not the final outcome of normal cerebral aging but seems to be a disease process which is different from normal aging, although structural changes such as those found in the brains of senile dementia patients may also be found in the brains of normal old people but to a much lesser degree. Physiological cerebral aging may be one factor but apparently not the decisive one in the etiology of senile dementia. A genetic disposition, as well as stress endured in the remote or recent past, may be of greater etiological importance.
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