Sebastian Crutch
Alzheimer's Research UK
United Kingdom
Alzheimers disease and posterior cortical atrophy: cognitive and neuroimaging studies of visual dysfunction
Alzheimer's Research UK
233,621
31/03/14
3.0
Alzheimer's disease & other dementias
Multimodal Biomarkers
The majority of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) experience memory problems as their first and most prominent symptom. However, there are less common variants in which the disease causes a different pattern of problems by affecting different parts of the brain. For example, posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a progressive syndrome characterised by dramatic loss of visual function (i.e. the ability to see what and where things are). PCA is caused not by problems with the eyes but by AD (or occasionally other degenerative diseases) affecting regions at the back of the brain that are involved in interpreting information about the visual world around us. This project investigates variation in AD, and particularly the disease mechanisms underpinning PCA. In this study, 50 PCA patients, 50 AD patients and 50 healthy control participants will be compared and contrasted at multiple time-points using a combination of clinical, neuropsychological, neuroimaging, genetic and pathological techniques. These comparisons will identify factors that cause the site of earliest change, the rate of progression and the pattern of progression to vary so greatly within this single disease population. These factors have relevance for the diagnosis, prognosis and response to therapy of both typical and atypical AD.