Abstract
Neurodegenerative dementias are characterized by insidious onset and gradual progression
of cognitive dysfunction, initially relatively focal with respect to cognitive domains
and brain regions involved. Neuroimaging techniques have contributed enormously to
both our understanding of large-scale network specificity in neurodegenerative syndromes
and our ability to make clinical diagnoses of syndromes such as Alzheimer's disease
(AD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), logopenic
primary progressive aphasia (PPA), agrammatic PPA, semantic dementia (SD), behavioral
variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), corticobasal syndrome (CBS), and progressive
supranuclear palsy syndrome (PSPS). More importantly, rapid advances in imaging and
computational techniques promise to improve our ability to make pathologic diagnoses
of AD, DLB, and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) pathologies in vivo at an
early stage of illness. Neuroimaging is thus integral to the development and application
of disease modifying therapies for neurodegenerative illnesses.
Keywords
neurodegeneration - neuroimaging - dementia - magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) - functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging
(fcMRI) - diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) - [
18F] fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) - amyloid positron emission
tomography - dopamine transporter (DAT) imaging - Alzheimer's disease - dementia with
Lewy bodies - frontotemporal dementia
