COGNITION-ENHANCING DRUGS IN MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT (MCI) AND ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE (AD): AN UPDATE[1]

Cognition enhancers are drugs able to facilitate attentional abilities and acquisition, storage and retrieval of information, and to attenuate the impairment of cognitive functions associated with head traumas, stroke, age and agerelated pathologies such as MCI and AD. Development of cognition enhancers is still a difficult task because of the complexity of the brain functions, poor predictivity of animal tests and lengthy and expensive clinical trials. Current research is based on several working hypotheses, derived from the progress of knowledge in the neuro-bio-pathology of cognitive processes.