Tracking Alzheimer's in the living brain

Susan Aldridge, PhD

Researchers have produced the first three-dimensional time lapse video of the progress of Alzheimer's disease in living patients.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can show how Alzheimer's disease shrinks the hippocampus, a key area of the brain for memory and learning. And post-mortem studies reveal how the disease devastates even larger brain areas. Now, for the first time, researchers show how Alzheimer's attacks the brain over time, using a new imaging technique based on MRI.

Teams from Los Angeles and the University of Queensland, Australia, looked at a group of 12 Alzheimer's patients and 14 healthy controls. They used changes in MRI scans over a period of two years to create three-dimensional videos, which shows brain damage spreading like wildfire through the Alzheimer brain.

They concluded that there is sequential destruction of brain areas - first, areas concerned with memory, then emotional and inhibition control, and finally sensation. But areas controlling vision and some other functions are spared.

The new approach promises a better way of diagnosing and monitoring Alzheimer's disease. It will also be useful in testing new therapies, to see what impact they are actually having on slowing brain damage. At present, this kind of information can only be obtained indirectly, through cognitive testing.

Source
Journal of Neuroscience 1st February 2003