Aberrant plasticity in Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a region-specific degenerative disease that mainly impairs the temporal and parietal lobes, with preservation of the frontal lobes until advanced stages of disease. Since [11C]diacylglycerol PET facilitates examination of loci exhibiting plasticity, it was performed in eight patients with AD and six age-matched normal control subjects to evaluate frontal lobe function. [11C]Diacylglycerol tomograms obtained from patients with AD demonstrated strong spotty incorporation of [11C]diacylglycerol mainly in the frontal association areas. However, [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose tomograms exhibited region-specific findings such as decreased CMRGIc in the parietotemporal association areas, which are involved in impairment of cognitive function. The strong spotty incorporation of [11C]diacylglycerol suggested a compensatory plastic process in the frontal lobes in response to involvement by Alzheimer's disease of the posterior association areas.
Kondo
M
M
Department of Neurology, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Japan.
Imahori
Y
Y
Mori
S
S
Ueda
Y
Y
Fujii
R
R
Nakajima
K
K
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000473:pathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed