NGF and Alzheimer disease: Cholinergic neurons, which strictly depend on their survival, neuritic outgrowth and phenotype differentiation from target-derived nerve growth factor (NGF) (Hartikka and Hefti, 1988a,b), are progressively reduced in affected patients in correlation with cognitive impairment (Davies and Maloney, 1976; Whitehouse et al., 1982; Wilcock et al., 1982; Lehéricy et al., 1993), supporting the hypothesis that their early-stage disturbance and, in turn, the associated decline in cholinergic innervation of cortical areas are seminal events for cognitive dysfunction occurring in AD.