**Author details**

Weili Xu1,2\*, Camilla Ferrari2,3 and Hui-Xin Wang2


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**Chapter 14**

**Apathy as a Key Symptom in Behavior Disorders:**

There is currently no consensus on the nosological position of apathy in clinical practice. The clinical significance of negative symptoms such as apathy is increasingly recognized in neurological and psychiatric disorders, particularly those associated with frontal-subcortical dysfunction (Starkstein et al., 2008; Moretti et al., 2012). Apathy is defined as lack of motiva‐ tion as manifested by diminished goal-directed behavior, reduced goal-directed cognition, and decreased emotional engagement, a reduced interest and participation in normal pur‐ poseful behavior, problems in initiation or sustaining an activity, lack of concern or indiffer‐ ence, and a flattening of affect. The prevalence of apathy in neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson's disease vary between 16.5% and 51%, depending upon the instrument for assessment and on the samples examined. Apathy is quite common also in sVAD; differ‐ ent studies try to define its role in AD, but, even the most recent and well-conducted did not distinguish between early and advanced stages of AD, or even between AD and AD with parkinsonism (Starkstein et al., 2008; Stuss et al., 2000; Dujardin et al., 2009). It has been hy‐ pothesized that dysfunction of the nigro-striatal pathway may play an important role in the pathophysiology of apathy in neuro-degenerative disorders. In fact, apathy seems to be in‐ dependent of disease duration, disability and severity of parkinsonism, and levodopa dose in PD, indicating that the brain changes underlying apathy differ from those associated with motor symptoms. Much more interesting is that not all the PD patients become apathetic, indicating that apathy should not entirely be considered a dopamine-dependent syndrome

> © 2013 Moretti et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

**Difference Between Alzheimer's Disease and**

**Subcortical Vascular Dementia**

Rita Moretti, Paola Torre, Francesca Esposito,

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Enrica Barro, Paola Tomietto and

Rodolfo M. Antonello

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/54264

**1. Introduction**

