Spatial pattern of cerebral glucose metabolism (PET) correlates with localization of intracerebral EEG-generators in Alzheimer's disease

BACKGROUND Since the measurement of human cerebral glucose metabolism (GluM) by positron emission tomography (PET) and that of human cerebral electrical activity by EEG reflect synaptic activity, both methods should be related in their cerebral spatial distribution. Healthy subjects do indeed demonstrate similar metabolic and neuroelectric spatial patterns. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to show that this similarity of GluM and EEG spatial patterns holds true in a population with a high variability of glucose metabolism. METHODS We investigated healthy control subjects and patients with varying degrees of cognitive dysfunction and varying GluM patterns by applying [18F]FDG PET and EEG. RESULTS We demonstrated that the localization of intracerebral generators of EEG correlates with spatial indices of GluM. CONCLUSION These results indicates that EEG provides similar spatial information about brain function as GluM-PET. Since EEG is a non-invasive technique, which is more widely available and can be repeated more often than PET, this may have important implications both for neuropsychiatric research and for clinical diagnosis. However, further studies are required to determine whether equivalent EEG dipole generators can yield a diagnostic specificity and sensitivity similar to that of GluM-PET.

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