Showing papers by "Daniela Perani published in 2009"

Revisiting Brain Reserve Hypothesis in Frontotemporal Dementia: Evidence from a Brain Perfusion Study

Abstract: Background: Literature data on Alzheimer’s disease suggest that years of schooling and occupational level are associated with a reserve mechanism. No data on patients with behaviora

Understanding others' regret: a FMRI study.

Abstract: Previous studies showed that the understanding of others' basic emotional experiences is based on a “resonant” mechanism, i.e., on the reactivation, in the observer's brain, of the cerebral areas associated with those experiences. The present study aimed to investigate whether the same neural mechanism is activated both when experiencing and attending complex, cognitively-generated, emotions. A gambling task and functional-Magnetic-Resonance-Imaging (fMRI) were used to test this hypothesis using regret, the negative cognitively-based emotion resulting from an unfavorable counterfactual comparison between the outcomes of chosen and discarded options. Do the same brain structures that mediate the experience of regret become active in the observation of situations eliciting regret in another individual? Here we show that observing the regretful outcomes of someone else's choices activates the same regions that are activated during a first-person experience of regret, i.e. the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus. These results extend the possible role of a mirror-like mechanism beyond basic emotions.

Survival in frontotemporal lobar degeneration and related disorders: latent class predictors and brain functional correlates.

Abstract: Background: Establishing survival rate in frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is a clinical challenge for defining disease outcomes and monitoring therapeutic interventions. Using the latent profile analysis (LPA) approach, we have previously suggested that FTLD patients can be grouped into specific phenotypes— “pseudomanic behavior” (LC1), “cognitive” (LC2), and “pseudodepressed behavior” (LC3)—on the basis of neuropsychological, functional, and behavioral data. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the rate of survival in FTLD, to identify predictors of survival, and to determine the likely usefulness of LPA in defining prognosis. Methods: A total of 252 FTLD patients entered the study. A clinical evaluation and standardized assessment were carried out, as well as a brain imaging study. LPA on neuropsychological, functional, and behavioral data was performed. Each patient was followed up over a 5-year period, and institutionalization or death was considered. Results: The survival rate wa...

PET Amyloid imaging and cognition in patients with Alzheimer's disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and healthy controls: a European multicenter study

Abstract: were further classified according to the presence or absence of an ApoE4 allele and by their subjective memory complaints (MC). All participants underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological examination, a MRI and a PiB-PET scan. Correlational analyses were performed between the different study outcomes. Results: Cortical PIB binding was markedly elevated in all AD patients except one. MCI subjects presented either an ‘‘AD-like’’ (63%) or normal pattern. Cortical PiB retention was abnormal in 34% of HC and its prevalence increased with age. HC with subjective memory complaints carrying an ApoE4 allele had significantly higher Ab burdens than non ApoE4 carriers. Conclusions: Phase I of the AIBL study has established the foundations for the longitudinal assessment of Ab burden in HC, MCI and AD. This will assist the development of techniques for early detection of AD while providing a cohort suitable for targeted early intervention studies.

A Grid-based SPM service (GriSPM) for SPECT and PET neurological studies

Abstract: Statistical parametric mapping (SPM) for the in-vivo assessment of brain functional parameters in neurological diseases is a voxel-based methodology used within the nuclear medicine community to increase the confidence level of diagnostic reporting. SPECT/PET SPM measurements result in maps of statistically significant hypo-/ hyperfunctionality in cerebral regions of the patient with respect to normal controls [1]. In general, voxel-based assessments of changes in the functional signal allow earlier and better diagnosis of neurological pathologies, which are also less biased than qualitative visual inspection of images or quantitative region-of-interest analysis [2–5]. Visual interpretation of SPM maps may also be more reliable and accurate in distinguishing different dementia conditions than clinical methods alone, as recently shown in a post-mortem confirmation study [5]. SPECT/PET SPM voxel-based studies thus might add important information that appropriately increases diagnostic confidence, even among experienced dementia specialists. Although SPM software is freely available and widely distributed (http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/software/) [6], its use is limited by three constraints: (1) the availability of a substantial number of control SPECT/PET studies suitable for statistical comparison with patients (control studies representing several conditions of normality to be compared with the patient on a single-subject basis), (2) the use of a platform equipped with specific commercial software, and (3) the set up of the SPM statistical design for clinical neurological single-subject comparisons. Meeting the first requirement is complex due to ethical issues and to the costs of neuroimaging in-vivo studies; the second constraint implies additional costs, maintenance and nonefficient use of time for the performance of the image analysis algorithms due to the use of the commercial interpreter; the third constraint limits the use of SPM to nuclear medicine centres with expertise in statistical methods. Considering these issues, we recommend to the nuclear medicine community the use of GriSPM, a centralized web SPM service specifically designed for SPECT and PET neurological images without the need for local acquisition of normal studies and free from the use of commercial software. The proposed SPM service was implemented as an open-to-authorized user, Grid-based web service including: (a) remote access to Grid-distributed databases of SPECT and PET images of normal subjects numerically appropriate for statistical analysis, and (b) a noncommercial, free, Grid-distributed computationally efficient SPM version, tailored for the analysis of brain images in neurological diseases (GriSPM). The Grid data approach (“move code rather than data”) was used for the implementation of the proposed SPM Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging (2009) 36:1193–1195 DOI 10.1007/s00259-009-1161-6