Zsuzsa Meszaros, MD, PhD

Many of the things that we busy ourselves with have no apparent utility. Blogging, playing games, and collecting come to mind. To declare that we are compelled to do these things may be too strong, but we do pursue these activities with little deliberation and without concern as to their usefulness. The ubiquity of these pursuits suggests that these activities or their variants helped humans survive at some point and that they now rest on innate brain programs.

Because hoarding occurs in a substantial portion of patients with neurodegenerative disorders, neurologists are likely to encounter patients with this problem. Until recently, they had little to offer their patients or the patients' caregivers. Compulsive hoarding can cause severe impairment and presents intriguing psychopathology, yet it has received little systematic study, and no effective treatment is currently on the market.