In Search of the Cortical Signature of Early Alzheimer Disease

In recent years, neuroimaging research on Alzheimer disease (AD) has undergone astounding growth following the development of several advanced computational methodologies for creating three-dimensional models of anatomical structures and for measuring cortical thickness (Neuropsychologia 2008; 46:1597). In this study, researchers tested the predictive power of a novel combination of FreeSurfer (a method of measuring cortical thickness) with a hypothesis-driven region-of-interest (ROI) analysis (Cereb Cortex 2009; 19:497). The researchers enrolled 49 patients with questionable AD (Clinical Dementia Rating Scale [CDR] score, 0.5). The patients underwent MRI and completed the CDR and Mini-Mental State Examination. The researchers examined nine…