Longitudinal Functional Alterations in Asymptomatic Women at Risk for Alzheimer''s Disease

PURPOSE: The authors sought to determine whether known alterations of brain function in normal individuals who are at high risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD) worsen or stay the same after a significant interval of time. METHODS: The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe cortical activation during confrontation naming in 14 women with high AD risk and 10 with low risk, based on family history and apolipoprotein-E4 allele status. They repeated the identical scan protocol in the same patients after 4 years. RESULTS: fMRI activation in high-AD-risk participants was found to be further diverged from that of their low-AD-risk counterparts over this period. CONCLUSION: fMRI may report on the presence and progression of neuropathology in the ventral temporal cortex or in functionally connected regions in presymptomatic AD.