Lars P. Klimaschewski - Parkinsons and Alzheimers Today: About Neurodegeneration and its Therapy

Responsible Editor: Christine Lerche

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature.

The registered company address is: Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin, Germany

This book is addressed to all those who want to be informed about the state of research on aging and cell death in the central nervous system. The early development and degeneration of our brain later in life are described with reference to recent research findings. The book is aimed at a readership interested in neurobiology or medicine and deals with the following questions: Why do we need billions of nerve cells? What distinguishes our brain from that of other mammals? Why does only man think in a complex language and plan his actions far into the future? Which parts of the brain are particularly important for this ability? Why do nerve cells fail in old age? What cell biological mechanisms are responsible for this? What exactly happens in Parkinsons and Alzheimers disease? Can the progression of neuronal cell death be delayed or even stopped? What new therapies for dementia and Parkinsons might be available in the future? Those who are willing to look behind the laboratory doors of neuroscientific research together with the author will receive answers to these questions.

In the first chapter of this book, the basic structure and development of our brain is outlined. The discussion of comparative aspects makes it clear why we need billions of nerve cells in contrast to most animal species. Only with this large number of building blocks, which function as nodes in the multitude of neuronal networks, are the typical human abilities made possible. I will point out the essential differences between humans and other mammals and refer to the neuroanatomical pecularities of our brain that explain how higher cognitive performance is achieved.

In the second part of the book, the consequences of the loss of neurons will be in the foreground. Early on, neurons perish every day (by the age of 80, around a third of all nerve cells in the brain are lost). That this happens largely unnoticed, we owe to a pronounced back-up. The most important information is stored several times in different neuronal networks, so that vital functions usually remain well preserved into old age. For people suffering from a neurodegenerative disease, however, this looks quite different. In addition to the biological basics of aging, this chapter therefore deals with the cellular processes that underlie Parkinsons and Alzheimers disease in more detail. The focus is on the development of both diseases from a neuropathological point of view, less on the medical side. This book is therefore not intended to replace the medical textbook, but to supplement it with neurobiological aspects.

The third chapter deals with the different options we have to delay or even stop neuronal degeneration. In the future, it may be possible to compensate for lost neurons by enhancing the formation of new nerve cells, the so-called neurogenesis. The currently available therapeutic approaches for the treatment of neuronal degeneration are also presented. However, the focus is on new research results leading to novel therapeutic strategies to treat Parkinsons and Alzheimers disease.

This book uses work published by leading neuroscientists and physicians worldwide. Their latest work is listed at the end of the chapters (without claiming to be complete). The schematic drawings were created using commercially available templates ( https://www.motifolio.com/ ). What is special about this book is that it will never be finished. Regularly I will present the latest and most relevant developments from the Alzheimers and Parkinsons laboratories in Klimas Brain Blog ( https://www.klimasbrainblog.com/en ). On my website you may also want to subscribe to a newsletter that will keep you up to date.

I would like to express my special thanks to my family and my colleagues and friends for their corrections and comments, in particular to Annegret Wehmeyer, Gerrit Krupski, Dietrich Lorke, Erich Brenner, Christian Humpel, Willi Eisner and Maximilian Freilinger. Furthermore, I would like to thank Dr. Christine Lerche and Claudia Bauer from Springer-Verlag for their support. Finally, I would like to thank all the students of the Universities of Heidelberg and Innsbruck who have attended my lectures and seminars over the years and discussed the development and aging of the brain with me. Some of the aspects discussed in this book go back to these conversations.

Most of the conclusions reported here are based on generally accepted and confirmed scientific results, however, some questions remain open and require further investigation. But thats how science works. Elaborate experiments are carried out in the laboratory and large data sets are generated. With much skepticism, these are then checked and often discarded, because the following sentence by Charles Darwin, the discoverer of the theory of evolution, applies more than ever: False facts are extremely harmful to the progress of science, because they often persist; false theories, on the other hand, which are supported by some evidence, do no harm; because everyone strives with praiseworthy zeal to prove their incorrectness.