This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (24)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Alzheimer Disease  • Radiologic Imaging  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging  • Genetic Disorders  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Adam S. Fleisher, MD; Wes S. Houston, PhD; Lisa T. Eyler, PhD; Susan Frye, APRN, BC; Cecily Jenkins, PhD; Leon J. Thal, MD; Mark W. Bondi, PhD

Arch Neurol. 2005;62:1881-1888.

Background  Functional magnetic resonance imaging plays a promising role in the preclinical characterization of Alzheimer disease (AD) for use in early diagnosis and in preventive drug trials.

Objective  To determine whether functional magnetic resonance imaging can reliably distinguish risk groups for AD among cognitively normal middle-aged adults.

Design  Cross-sectional case-control study.

Setting  University of California, San Diego, Alzheimer Disease Research Center participants and San Diego community volunteers.

Participants  Twenty cognitively normal individuals (10 high risk and 10 low risk), aged 58 to 65 years, were divided into 2 groups based on the presence or absence of the apolipoprotein E 4 allele and a positive family history of AD.

Main Outcome Measures  Word pairs were presented in a blocked design alternating between conditions of novel pairs, repeated pairs, and fixation. Whole-brain differences in blood oxygenation level–dependent brain responses between conditions were compared across risk groups.

Results  Compared with the low-risk group, the high-risk group showed many areas of differential blood oxygenation level–dependent response in regions commonly associated with AD pathology (eg, the left medial temporal lobe). Furthermore, different patterns of association between left medial temporal lobe activity and memory performance were demonstrated.

Conclusions  Results support a theory of up-regulation in neuronal memory systems in people at risk for AD many years before the typical age at disease onset. They further demonstrate that functional magnetic resonance imaging is a viable technique to identify persons at risk for AD.

Author Affiliations: Departments of Neurosciences (Drs Fleisher, Jenkins, and Thal and Ms Frye) and Psychiatry (Dr Eyler), University of California, San Diego, and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System (Drs Thal and Bondi); and Department of Neurology, University of Iowa, Iowa City (Dr Houston).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Semantic memory activation in individuals at risk for developing Alzheimer disease
Seidenberg et al.
Neurology 2009;73:612-620.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Distinct patterns of brain activity in young carriers of the APOE-{varepsilon}4 allele
Filippini et al.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2009;106:7209-7214.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

The influence of parental history of Alzheimer's disease and apolipoprotein E {varepsilon}4 on the BOLD signal during recognition memory
Xu et al.
Brain 2009;132:383-391.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

The Role of the Immune System in Alzheimer's Disease
Cohen
Focus 2009;7:28-35.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Perfusion fMRI detects deficits in regional CBF during memory-encoding tasks in MCI subjects
Xu et al.
Neurology 2007;69:1650-1656.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Effect of Alzheimer Disease Risk on Brain Function During Self-appraisal in Healthy Middle-aged Adults
Johnson et al.
Arch Gen Psychiatry 2007;64:1163-1171.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

The influence of Alzheimer disease family history and apolipoprotein E epsilon4 on mesial temporal lobe activation.
Johnson et al.
J. Neurosci. 2006;26:6069-6076.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT