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 Rodriguez Senior Lecturer in Psychology Dr Maria Valdes-Hernandez Row Fogo Lecturer in Medical Image Analysis Affiliated insitution: Department of Psychology, University of Strathclyde (UK) Affiliated departments at The University of Edinburgh: Row Fogo Centre for Research into Ageing and the Brain Edinburgh Imaging Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences Email: mario.parra-rodriguez@strath.ac.uk Dr Mario A Parra Rodriguez research profile (external link) Email: M.Valdes-Hernan@ed.ac.uk Dr Maria Valdes-Hernandez research profile 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. Publication link 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. Publication link Image Key contact Please, get in touch with Dr Maria Valdes-Hernandez for more information about this project and further collaboration. M.Valdes-Hernan@ed.ac.uk This article was published on 2024-08-27
