Semi-empirical, RHF and DFT calculations were carried out to study well known acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, i.e., tacrine, donepezil, galantamine, physostigmine, and tacrine dimer (bis-tacrine). Electronic and structural parameters were used in order to correlate the acetylcholinesterase inhibition activity with their molecular structure. The optimized geometries of these drugs were analyzed by multivariate PCA statistical method. Frontier orbital energies (HOMO and LUMO), the (HOMO-LUMO) gap and the distance between more acidic hydrogen species were used to determine principal components. The PCA results indicated that these drugs were ordered into three groups according to the first principal component: galantamine/physostigmine, donepezil/tacrine dimer and tacrine. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.