Alison D. Murray
I have been working in brain aging and dementia research for several years and have been excited to see the role of neuroimaging in patients with dementia progress from exclusion of treatable mass lesions, such as tumors or subdurals (which occur in a tiny proportion of those we image), to diagnosis of biomarkers of underlying neuropathology.
This article is a summary of what is feasible with current routine imaging tools when referred a patient with dementia, and indicates what structural and molecular modalities are useful. It also highlights developing areas, such as novel PET ligands and image analysis methods. The influence on clinical practice will depend on imaging resources and local guidelines. However, the main change in practice will be driven by development of disease-modifying drugs and cheaper disease-specific biomarkers, and state-of-the-art structural, functional, and molecular neuroimaging has an important role in validating these.
Feedback has been positive and has been used as basis for developing eLearning modules with the Scottish Imaging Network SINAPSE www.sinapse.ac.uk.
Our program of structural MRI on normal cognitive aging, based on the Aberdeen Birth Cohorts of 1921, and now 1936, continues. Our next target is to recruit a younger and larger sample into a longitudinal program of structural and functional connectivity MRI and molecular imaging of amyloid burden. We are particularly interested in correlates of cognitive reserve (the ability to retain intellectual ability in the presence of neuropathology) and early life and life-course predictors of this.
We have presented our findings recently, at the European Society of Neuroradiology and at the British Neuroscience Association Festival of