The 3D research enables scientists to identify the Alzheimer’s
(the brain shrinks)
(the brain shrinks)
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Like an ancient explorer discovering the world, Alan Evans plots courses for the future as he maps the brain in 3D.
And one of the paths the scientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital hopes to chart is how Alzheimer's makes its steady, devastating advance.
"What we're trying to understand is the mechanisms of the disease," said Evans, director of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre's ACE NeuroImaging Laboratory.
His research is one of the many patient and meticulous efforts going on in laboratories around the world as scientists try to crack the mystery of the human brain.
Evans said 3D imaging enables researchers to measure the thickness of the brain's cortex, "the mantle around the outside of the brain where the thinking goes on" without taking it out of the skull.
The mantle has a typical thickness of three to four millimetres, he said.
"In Alzheimer's disease, it starts to waste away in specific brain areas and it's that wasting away that underlies the memory deficits or the other forms of cognitive deficits."
Evans' efforts help researchers to see the differences in the measurements of a normal brain and a diseased brain. In his study, 1,000 normal brains were compared to 1,000 Alzheimer's-affected brains.
"What you derive from that kind of computational, statistical analysis is much more reliable, how it is in the population," he said. "This is how Alzheimer's disease changes over time differently from how the normal brain changes over time."
While a major advance, Evans points out it's a long way from helping cure the disease, which currently has no remedy.
"We were able to look non-invasively at the Alzheimer's brain and understand where it starts, how it changes over time in the typical Alzheimer's disease progression. Continue to read: medbroadcast.com
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