Do cognitive patterns of brain magnetic activity correlate with hippocampal atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease?

Background: Many reports support the clinical validity of volumetric MRI measurements in Alzheimer’s disease. Objective: To integrate functional brain imaging data derived from magnetoencephalography (MEG) and volumetric data in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and in age matched controls. Methods: MEG data were obtained in the context of a probe-letter memory task. Volumetric measurements were obtained for lateral and mesial temporal lobe regions. Results: As expected, Alzheimer’s disease patients showed greater hippocampal atrophy than controls bilaterally. MEG derived indices of the degree of activation in left parietal and temporal lobe areas, occurring after 400 ms from stimulus onset, correlated significantly with the relative volume of lateral and mesial temporal regions. In addition, the size of the right hippocampus accounted for a significant portion of the variance in cognitive scores independently of brain activity measures. Conclusions: These data support the view that there is a relation between hippocampal atrophy and the degree of neurophysiological activity in the left temporal lobe.

[1]  B. W van Dijk,et al.  Magnetoencephalographic analysis of cortical activity in Alzheimer's disease: a pilot study , 2000, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[2]  B. Rockstroh,et al.  Focal temporoparietal slow activity in Alzheimer’s disease revealed by magnetoencephalography , 2002, Biological Psychiatry.

[3]  J. Schneider,et al.  Parahippocampal tau pathology in healthy aging, mild cognitive impairment, and early Alzheimer's disease , 2002, Annals of neurology.

[4]  A. Baddeley.  Is working memory still working? , 2001, The American psychologist.

[5]  T. Hattori,et al.  Expression of matrix metalloproteinase-9 and urinary-type plasminogen activator in Alzheimer's disease brain. , 2001, Clinical neuropathology.

[6]  George Zouridakis,et al.  Lateralization of Cerebral Activation in Auditory Verbal and Non-Verbal Memory Tasks Using Magnetoencephalography , 2004, Brain Topography.

[7]  K. Meguro,et al.  Decreased cortical glucose metabolism correlates with hippocampal atrophy in Alzheimer's disease as shown by MRI and PET. , 1997, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[8]  Inah Lee,et al.  Differential contribution of NMDA receptors in hippocampal subregions to spatial working memory , 2002, Nature Neuroscience.

[9]  M. Westerveld,et al.  Verbal memory impairment resulting from hippocampal neuron loss among epileptic patients with structural lesions , 1995, Neurology.

[10]  F. Collette,et al.  Brain imaging of the central executive component of working memory , 2002, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[11]  Paolo Vitali,et al.  Hippocampal perfusion in mild Alzheimer's disease , 2000, Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

[12]  A. Lobo,et al.  [Cognocitive mini-test (a simple practical test to detect intellectual changes in medical patients)]. , 1979, Actas luso-espanolas de neurologia, psiquiatria y ciencias afines.

[13]  C. Jack,et al.  Memory and MRI-based hippocampal volumes in aging and AD , 2000, Neurology.

[14]  J Arrazola,et al.  Spatio-temporal patterns of brain magnetic activity during a memory task in Alzheimer's disease , 2001, Neuroreport.

[15]  A. Papanicolaou,et al.  Localization of language-specific cortex by using magnetic source imaging and electrical stimulation mapping. , 1999, Journal of neurosurgery.

[16]  G Zouridakis,et al.  Magnetoencephalographic mapping of the language-specific cortex. , 1998, Journal of neurosurgery.

[17]  A. Papanicolaou,et al.  Atypical temporal lobe language representation: MEG and intraoperative stimulation mapping correlation. , 1999, Neuroreport.

[18]  D. Amaral,et al.  Hippocampal‐neocortical interaction: A hierarchy of associativity , 2000, Hippocampus.

[19]  Risto Näätänen,et al.  Impaired preconscious auditory processing and cognitive functions in Alzheimer's disease , 1999, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[20]  Andrew J. Saykin,et al.  The Relationship between fMRI Activation and Cerebral Atrophy: Comparison of Normal Aging and Alzheimer Disease , 2000, NeuroImage.

[21]  J. Sarvas.  Basic mathematical and electromagnetic concepts of the biomagnetic inverse problem. , 1987, Physics in medicine and biology.

[22]  Nick C Fox,et al.  Normalization of cerebral volumes by use of intracranial volume: implications for longitudinal quantitative MR imaging. , 2001, AJNR. American journal of neuroradiology.

[23]  M J Bronskill,et al.  Quantitative MR volumetry in Alzheimer's disease , 1997, Neurology.

[24]  R. Killiany,et al.  Use of structural magnetic resonance imaging to predict who will get Alzheimer's disease , 2000, Annals of neurology.

[25]  S. Ko,et al.  Memory impairments associated with hippocampal versus parahippocampal ! gyrus atrophy ] an MR volumetry study in Alzheimer | s disease , 1998 .

[26]  P Julin,et al.  Visual rating and volumetry of the medial temporal lobe on magnetic resonance imaging in dementia: a comparative study , 2000, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[27]  A. Pfeffer,et al.  Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Based Hippocampal Volumetry in Patients with Dementia of the Alzheimer Type , 1999, Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders.

[28]  R. Woods,et al.  Cortical change in Alzheimer's disease detected with a disease-specific population-based brain atlas. , 2001, Cerebral cortex.

[29]  Tuomo Hänninen,et al.  Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease: MRI of the hippocampus vs delayed recall , 2000, Neuropsychologia.