Neurodegenerative diseases are sporadic and rare hereditary disorders of the central nervous system, which cause a slowly progressive loss of function of specific neuron populations and their connections. Severe impairments and care dependency can be the sequelae. Neurodegenerative disorders are diseases of older people; therefore, the demographic shift leads to an increase in the number of affected patients. Radiologists will also become more involved. For this reason important neurodegenerative diseases are presented in this article. In addition to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases these also include frontotemporal lobar degeneration, Lewy body dementia, vascular dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and Huntington's chorea. The clinical symptoms and diagnostics are described, whereby the focus lies on typical results of morphological imaging.