Barbara B. Bendlin, PhD – Slide of the Week

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by accumulation of amyloid and neurofibrillary tangles, and this pathology can be detected using neuroimaging or fluid biomarkers prior to the development of dementia. The Alzheimer’s disease process also involves neurodegeneration which eventually leads to cognitive decline and dementia, however typical approaches for measuring neurodegeneration (such as T1-weighted imaging), may not be sensitive to neurodegeneration in the asymptomatic disease stage.

James Li, PhD – Slide of the Week

There is substantial heterogeneity in the development of depression from adolescence into adulthood. Yet, little is known about the risk factors underlying its various patterns of development. For instance, despite the discovery of genetic variants for depression, these discoveries have not accounted for the high degree of genetic covariation between multiple disorders, nor have they been applied to disambiguate its heterogeneous developmental presentations.

Bradley T Christian, PhD – Slide of the Week

Adults with Down syndrome (DS) are predisposed to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and a characterization of glucose metabolism change throughout AD progression has yet to be performed in this population. Using FDG PET, regional glucose metabolism was evaluated across groups of cognitively stable DS (CS-DS), DS with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease (MCI-DS/AD), and healthy non-DS sibling controls.

Andrew Alexander, PhD – Slide of the Week

Demonstration of the ability of MPnRAGE to correct for severe motion artifacts in a 7 year old girl.  Retrospective motion correction greatly reduced motion-induced blurring in both  structural T1-weighted images and quantitative T1 maps.  The correction greatly improves the reliability of brain imaging measurements in children.  The plots indicate the estimated amount of head motions that were corrected.