Changes in Brain Morphology in Alzheimer Disease and Normal Aging: Is Alzheimer Disease an Exaggerated Aging Process?
Takashi Ohnishia,
Hiroshi Matsudaa,
Takeshi Tabiraa,
Takashi Asadaa and
Masatake Unoa
a From the Departments of Radiology (T.O., H.M.) and Psychiatry (T.A., M.U.), National Center Hospital of Mental, Nervous, and Muscular Disorders, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry; and the Division of Demyelinating Disease and Aging (T.O., T.T.), National Institute of Neuroscience, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan.
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FIG 1. Outline summary of voxel-based morphometry. Spatial normalization fitted each individual brain to a standard template brain in 3D space. Normalized MR images were then segmented into gray matter, white matter, cerebrospinal fluid, and other compartments. The gray matter images were smoothed with a 12-mm, full-width half-maximum isotropic gaussian kernel to use the partial volume effect to create a spectrum of gray matter intensities
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FIG 2. Negative correlations between age and regional gray matter volume in healthy volunteers. The SPM of the t statistics (after transformation to a SPM [Z] for this contrast) is displayed in a standard format as a maximum intensity projection viewed from the right-hand side and from the back and the top of the brain. The anatomic space corresponds to the atlas of Talairach and Tournoux (18). Significant reduction of regional gray matter volume is noted in the inferior frontal gyrus, the insular cortex, cingulate gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, precuneus, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right inferior parietal lobule, and orbitofrontal cortex
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FIG 3. Significant reduction of regional gray matter volumes in AD, which was noted in the bilateral hippocampal formation, entorhinal cortex, and parahippocampal cortex
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