Project title: "Exploring the structural brain imaging correlates underpinning cognitive changes leading to dementia"
Collaborating institution: University of Strathclyde, Department of Psychology (Glasgow, Scotland, UK)
About the project
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, and is known to affect about 50 million people around the world. Alzheimer’s has proven difficult to predict. One of the first signs of the disease is the appearance of mild cognitive impairment, where individuals start to struggle with memory, reasoning, and staying focussed. One of the first cognitive functions affected before any other symptom appear is the short term memory binding, which is the ability to keep information for a short time by establishing links or associations with known facts. This project aims to explore the brain regions and neuroimaging signatures involved in this cognitive function to map the trajectory of cognitive decline leading, mainly, to Alzheimer’s dementia. We also look into other neurodegenerative diseases to establish a possible common pattern for age-related neurodegenerative diseases and cognitive decline.
Project collaborators
Dr Mario A Parra RodriguezSenior Lecturer in Psychology |
Dr Maria Valdes-HernandezRow Fogo Lecturer in Medical Image Analysis |
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Affiliated insitution: Department of Psychology, University of Strathclyde (UK)
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Affiliated departments at The University of Edinburgh:
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Email: M.Valdes-Hernan@ed.ac.uk |
Awarded grants
This project was initially funded by the Alzheimer’s Society (AS-SF-14-008), which is ongoing in form of academic projects due to synergies in research interests.
Publications
Valdés Hernández MC, Clark R, Wang SH, Guazzo F, Calia C, Pattan V, Starr J, Della Sala S, Parra MA. The striatum, the hippocampus, and short-term memory binding: Volumetric analysis of the subcortical grey matter's role in mild cognitive impairment. Neuroimage Clin. 2020;25:102158. Epub 2019 Dec 29. PMID: 31918064; PMCID: PMC7036699.
Valdés Hernández MDC, Abu-Hussain J, Qiu X, Priller J, Parra Rodríguez M, Pino M, Báez S, Ibáñez A. Structural neuroimaging differentiates vulnerability from disease manifestation in Colombian families with Huntington's disease. Brain Behav. 2019 Aug;9(8):e01343. Jul 5. PMID: 31276317; PMCID: PMC6710228.
Key contact
Please, get in touch with Dr Maria Valdes-Hernandez for more information about this project and further collaboration.