The proposed ADRC will provide core facilities to enhance ongoing, funded studies of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) including a longitudinal study of the natural history of the disease, studies of potential ante-mortem diagnostic markers and studies of potential pharmacologic treatment. The Administrative Core provides limited clerical support, a health care professional training section and an information transfer section which will service as a clearing-house for transmission of current developments in all areas of AD research and provide an annual conference for principal investigators and researchers in the field. The Autopsy Core will provide critical information to all ante-mortem studies and to the longitudinal study. The Patient Recruitment Core which provides subjects for all protocols will draw from a cadre of area facilities; included will be patients with AD, MID, Parkinson's disease, and non demented controls. The Research Support Core will provide coordinated data management, processing, and analyses. The ADRC will also include a series of new investigations: (1) an animal model study will try to develop a model of AD in the rat; (2) a study will assess whether scopolamine induced amnesia can be used as a human model of AD; (3) an electrophysiological study will examine elements of the underlying disease process in hippocampal slices of the rat brain; (4) a study will examine the treatment of the non-cognitive disorders (agitation and depression) often associated with AD: and (5) studies to determine the neurochemical mechanisms responsible for the mild cortisolemia present in the disease. Three pilot projects which will determine the feasibility of particular lines of research are proposed: one which tries to determine pedigrees in AD families where more than one close relative is affected; an examination of the neuropsychological determinants of informed consent by subjects in AD research; and an examination of the role of CNS muscarinic receptors in animals. Additional pilot projects will be added as the ADRC develops.