Haxby J V, Grady C L, Friedland R P, Rapoport S I
Laboratory of Neurosciences, National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, Maryland.
J Neural Transm Suppl. 1987;24:49-53.
Patterns or regional cerebral metabolism and neuropsychological function were studied longitudinally in 10 mildly demented patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and compared to those of moderately demented patients and controls. As reported previously (Haxby et al., 1986), the mildly demented patients initially had significant neocortical metabolic abnormalities, namely parietal reductions and right-left asymmetries, but did not differ from controls on any test of neocortically-mediated visuospatial and language functions. Right-left metabolic asymmetries correlated with neuropsychological discrepancies between visuospatial and language function in moderately demented but not mildly demented patients. We now report that longitudinal studies of these mildly demented patients showed significant decline of nonmemory cognitive function. Moreover, correlations of metabolic asymmetries with neuropsychological discrepancies between visuospatial and language functions became significant. These longitudinal results confirm our previous conclusion that neocortical metabolic abnormalities precede neocortically-mediated neuropsychological impairments in early DAT.
对10名患有阿尔茨海默型痴呆（DAT）的轻度痴呆患者的大脑代谢模式和神经心理功能进行了纵向研究，并与中度痴呆患者及对照组进行了比较。如先前报道（哈克斯比等人，1986年），轻度痴呆患者最初存在显著的新皮质代谢异常，即顶叶代谢降低和左右不对称，但在任何由新皮质介导的视觉空间和语言功能测试中与对照组并无差异。左右代谢不对称与中度痴呆而非轻度痴呆患者的视觉空间和语言功能之间的神经心理差异相关。我们现在报告，对这些轻度痴呆患者的纵向研究显示非记忆认知功能显著下降。此外，代谢不对称与视觉空间和语言功能之间的神经心理差异的相关性变得显著。这些纵向结果证实了我们先前的结论，即在早期DAT中，新皮质代谢异常先于由新皮质介导的神经心理损害。
