What's in a name?

There is precedent in the AD field for confusion and dissonance due to the naming of clinical phenomena. Early on, Alzheimer's disease (AD) or Alzheimer's dementia could mean anyone with progressive dementia, and did not require the application of standardised criteria. As standardisation improved at the stage of dementia, the terms Mild Cognitive Impairment or Minimal Cognitive Impairment came into usage and the clinical conditions encompassed by these terms were variably named and defined in different nomenclature systems (eg., AAN, DSM, ICD) and required different criteria depending upon the definitions used by different academic working groups. A similar controversy now exists regarding the naming of individuals who have biological markers consistent with AD, but do not have any clinical symptoms or functional decline from baseline.