Schröder J, Buchsbaum M S, Shihabuddin L, Tang C, Wei T C, Spiegel-Cohen J, Hazlett E A, Abel L, Luu-Hsia C, Ciaravolo T M, Marin D, Davis K L
Section of Gerontopsychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
Biol Psychiatry. 2001 Mar 1;49(5):426-36. doi: 10.1016/s0006-3223(00)00983-5.
Declarative memory changes are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, although their functional neuroanatomy is not restricted to a single structure. Factor analysis provides statistical methods for evaluating patterns of cerebral changes in regional glucose uptake.
Thirty-three Alzheimer's patients and 33 age- and gender-matched control subjects were studied with magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography with [(18)F] deoxyglucose. During the tracer-uptake period, subjects performed a serial verbal learning task. Cortical activity was measured in 32 regions of interest, four in each lobe on both hemispheres.
Factor analysis with varimax rotation identified seven factors explaining 80% of the variance ("parietal cortex," "occipital cortex," "right temporo-prefrontal areas," "frontal cortex," "motor strip," "left temporal cortex," and "posterior temporal cortex"). Relative to control subjects, Alzheimer's patients showed significantly reduced values on the factors occipital cortex, right temporo-prefrontal areas, frontal cortex, and left temporal cortex. The factor temporo-prefrontal areas showed large differences between patients with good and poor performance, but little difference when control subjects were similarly divided.
Findings suggest that Alzheimer's disease is characterized by altered patterns of cortical activity, rather than deficits in a single location, and emphasize the importance of right temporo-prefrontal circuitry for understanding memory deficits.
陈述性记忆改变是阿尔茨海默病的标志，尽管其功能神经解剖学并不局限于单一结构。因子分析提供了评估区域葡萄糖摄取中脑变化模式的统计方法。
对33名阿尔茨海默病患者和33名年龄及性别匹配的对照受试者进行了磁共振成像和用[18F]脱氧葡萄糖的正电子发射断层扫描研究。在示踪剂摄取期间，受试者执行了一项系列言语学习任务。在32个感兴趣区域测量皮质活动，每个半球的每个脑叶中有4个区域。
采用方差最大化旋转的因子分析确定了7个因子，解释了80%的方差（“顶叶皮质”、“枕叶皮质”、“右侧颞前额叶区域”、“额叶皮质”、“运动带”、“左侧颞叶皮质”和“颞叶后皮质”）。与对照受试者相比，阿尔茨海默病患者在枕叶皮质、右侧颞前额叶区域、额叶皮质和左侧颞叶皮质这些因子上的值显著降低。颞前额叶区域这个因子在表现良好和较差的患者之间显示出很大差异，但对照受试者进行类似划分时差异很小。
研究结果表明，阿尔茨海默病的特征是皮质活动模式改变，而非单一部位的缺陷，并强调了右侧颞前额叶回路对于理解记忆缺陷的重要性。
