Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), also called frontotemporal degeneration disease or frontotemporal neurocognitive disorder, encompasses several types of dementia involving the progressive degeneration of the brain's frontal and temporal lobes. Men and women appear to be equally affected. FTD generally presents as a behavioral or language disorder with gradual onset. Signs and symptoms tend to appear in late adulthood, typically between the ages of 45 and 65, although it can affect people younger or older than this. Currently, no cure or approved symptomatic treatment for FTD exists, although some off-label drugs and behavioral methods are prescribed.
Cerebral atrophy is a common feature of many of the diseases that affect the brain. Atrophy of any tissue means a decrement in the size of the cell, which can be due to progressive loss of cytoplasmic proteins. In brain tissue, atrophy describes a loss of neurons and the connections between them. Brain atrophy can be classified into two main categories: generalized and focal atrophy. Generalized atrophy occurs across the entire brain whereas focal atrophy affects cells in a specific location. If the cerebral hemispheres are affected, conscious thought and voluntary processes may be impaired.
Progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) is one of three clinical syndromes associated with frontotemporal lobar degeneration. PNFA has an insidious onset of language deficits over time as opposed to other stroke-based aphasias, which occur acutely following trauma to the brain. The specific degeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes in PNFA creates hallmark language deficits differentiating this disorder from other Alzheimer-type disorders by the initial absence of other cognitive and memory deficits. This disorder commonly has a primary effect on the left hemisphere, causing the symptomatic display of expressive language deficits and sometimes may disrupt receptive abilities in comprehending grammatically complex language.
Imaging genetics refers to the use of anatomical or physiological imaging technologies as phenotypic assays to evaluate genetic variation. Scientists that first used the term imaging genetics were interested in how genes influence psychopathology and used functional neuroimaging to investigate genes that are expressed in the brain.
Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Increasingly it is also being used for quantitative research studies of brain disease and psychiatric illness. Neuroimaging is highly multidisciplinary involving neuroscience, computer science, psychology and statistics, and is not a medical specialty. Neuroimaging is sometimes confused with neuroradiology.
Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), also called Benson's syndrome, is a rare form of dementia which is considered a visual variant or an atypical variant of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The disease causes atrophy of the posterior part of the cerebral cortex, resulting in the progressive disruption of complex visual processing. PCA was first described by D. Frank Benson in 1988.
National Brain Research Centre is a research institute in Manesar, Gurugram, India. It is an autonomous institute under the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. The institute is dedicated to research in neuroscience and brain functions in health and diseases using multidisciplinary approaches. This is the first autonomous institute by DBT to be awarded by the Ministry of Education, Government of India, formerly known as the Ministry of Human Resource Development, in May 2002. NBRC was dedicated to the nation by the Honorable President of India Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in December 2003. The founder chairman of NBRC Society is Prof. Prakash Narain Tandon, whereas the founder director Prof. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath was followed by Prof. Subrata Sinha and Prof. Neeraj Jain. The current director of NBRC is Prof. Krishanu Ray.
A hyperintensity or T2 hyperintensity is an area of high intensity on types of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the brain of a human or of another mammal that reflect lesions produced largely by demyelination and axonal loss. These small regions of high intensity are observed on T2 weighted MRI images within cerebral white matter or subcortical gray matter. The volume and frequency is strongly associated with increasing age. They are also seen in a number of neurological disorders and psychiatric illnesses. For example, deep white matter hyperintensities are 2.5 to 3 times more likely to occur in bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder than control subjects. WMH volume, calculated as a potential diagnostic measure, has been shown to correlate to certain cognitive factors. Hyperintensities appear as "bright signals" on an MRI image and the term "bright signal" is occasionally used as a synonym for a hyperintensity.
The LONI Pipeline is a free distributed system for designing, executing, monitoring and sharing scientific workflows on grid computing architectures. Pipeline allows users to connect and run any number of different software tools, and conveniently visualize and download the results.
Samuel E. Gandy, is a neurologist, cell biologist, Alzheimer's disease (AD) researcher and expert in the metabolism of the sticky substance called amyloid that clogs the brain in patients with Alzheimer's. His team discovered the first drugs that could lower the formation of amyloid.
Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) is a multisite study that aims to improve clinical trials for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). This cooperative study combines expertise and funding from the private and public sector to study subjects with AD, as well as those who may develop AD and controls with no signs of cognitive impairment. Researchers at 63 sites in the US and Canada track the progression of AD in the human brain with neuroimaging, biochemical, and genetic biological markers. This knowledge helps to find better clinical trials for the prevention and treatment of AD. ADNI has made a global impact, firstly by developing a set of standardized protocols to allow the comparison of results from multiple centers, and secondly by its data-sharing policy which makes available all at the data without embargo to qualified researchers worldwide. To date, over 1000 scientific publications have used ADNI data. A number of other initiatives related to AD and other diseases have been designed and implemented using ADNI as a model. ADNI has been running since 2004 and is currently funded until 2021.
The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a five-year project sponsored by sixteen components of the National Institutes of Health, split between two consortia of research institutions. The project was launched in July 2009 as the first of three Grand Challenges of the NIH's Blueprint for Neuroscience Research. On September 15, 2010, the NIH announced that it would award two grants: $30 million over five years to a consortium led by Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota, with strong contributions from University of Oxford (FMRIB) and $8.5 million over three years to a consortium led by Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California Los Angeles.
Anders Martin Dale is a prominent neuroscientist and professor of radiology, neurosciences, psychiatry, and cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and is one of the world's leading developers of sophisticated computational neuroimaging techniques. He is the founding Director of the Center for Multimodal Imaging Genetics (CMIG) at UCSD.
Marcus E. Raichle is an American neurologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, Missouri. He is a professor in the Department of Radiology with joint appointments in Neurology, Neurobiology and Biomedical Engineering. His research over the past 40 years has focused on the nature of functional brain imaging signals arising from PET and fMRI and the application of these techniques to the study of the human brain in health and disease. He received the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience “for the discovery of specialized brain networks for memory and cognition", together with Brenda Milner and John O’Keefe in 2014.
Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to produce high-quality two- or three-dimensional images of the brain, brainstem, and cerebellum without ionizing radiation (X-rays) or radioactive tracers.
Current standards for diagnosing multiple sclerosis (MS) are based on the 2018 revision of McDonald criteria. They rely on MRI detection of demyelinating lesions in the CNS, which are distributed in space (DIS) and in time (DIT). It is also a requirement that any possible known disease that produces demyelinating lesions is ruled out before applying McDonald's criteria.
Resting state fMRI, also referred to as task-independent fMRI or task-free fMRI, is a method of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that is used in brain mapping to evaluate regional interactions that occur in a resting or task-negative state, when an explicit task is not being performed. A number of resting-state brain networks have been identified, one of which is the default mode network. These brain networks are observed through changes in blood flow in the brain which creates what is referred to as a blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal that can be measured using fMRI.
Alcohol-related brain damage alters both the structure and function of the brain as a result of the direct neurotoxic effects of alcohol intoxication or acute alcohol withdrawal. Increased alcohol intake is associated with damage to brain regions including the frontal lobe, limbic system, and cerebellum, with widespread cerebral atrophy, or brain shrinkage caused by neuron degeneration. This damage can be seen on neuroimaging scans.
Frederik Barkhof is a neuroradiologist. He led the development of the Barkhof Criteria for using MRI findings to predict conversion to clinically definite multiple sclerosis.
