TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Degenerative Diseases of the Nervous System A1 - Ropper, Allan H. A1 - Samuels, Martin A. A1 - Klein, Joshua P. A1 - Prasad, Sashank Y1 - 2019 N1 - T2 - Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology, 11e AB - The adjective degenerative has no great appeal to the modern neurologist. It implies an inexplicable decline from a previous level of normalcy to a lower level of function—an ambiguous conceptualization of disease that satisfies neither a clinician nor a scientist. Moreover, it gives no hint as to the fundamental causation of a process and in all likelihood combines a number of mechanisms under one nondescript term. It would be tempting to attribute all progressive diseases of the nervous system that are of unknown cause to degeneration. The problem is that many degenerative diseases are caused in a proportion of cases by germ line genetic changes. All are currently called degenerative, but this nosology is a transitional method of holding a place while awaiting more refined understanding. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/11/11 UR - accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1162598066 ER -