Fifteen chapters subdivided into four sections (Introduction, Cellular Mechanisms for Neurodegeneration, Most Frequent Neurodegenerative Diseases, and Future Therapies) comprise this rather technical publication. The stated aim of the work is to review the most recent findings of research that explores pathways and mechanisms for neurodegenerative diseases and to explore how current knowledge is being applied to improve the lives of patients affected by such illnesses. Most of the chapter authors are based in Brazil and all have received their PhDs within the last two decades; hence the title, Young Perspectives for Old Diseases.

There is quite a bit of information stuffed into this package, but the perspective is very much that of the laboratory based scientist and there is little that reflects direct clinical engagement with patients. The chapter on the neurodegenerative disease that is of most interest to psychiatrists working with older patients, Alzheimer's disease, gives a fairly naïve and incomplete account of the dominant amyloid cascade hypotheses that is bettered in many available books, including clinical textbooks of old age psychiatry. Several other chapters reflect a somewhat superficial approach to their topics. Most chapters are quite readable and appear to have been edited to ensure a consistently good quality of English, but I am still trying to figure out what the authors of chapter 12, dealing with the oddly coupled pair of Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Frontotemporal Dementia (why not deal with DLB in the chapter on Parkinson's Disease for crying out loud?) meant by saying in the last sentence of a very brief abstract ‘Here in this chapter we discuss the last’.

While the wide ranging subject matter, including multiple sclerosis and peripheral neuropathies, might broaden the perspectives of some readers of International Psychogeriatrics, the patchy quality of this book and its lack of a clinical perspective mean that it will not be of great interest to most of them.