Neuroimaging Core The NIA - Layton Aging & Alzheimer?s Disease Center (NIA/LAADC) herein referred to as the Oregon ADC or OADC, has a 20+ year history of substantive longitudinal neuroimaging research, with a focus on healthy aging, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and MRI markers of early dementia in the elderly, and includes an extensive longitudinal database of over 3700 MRI?s from over 1000 subjects. With the establishment of the OHSU Advanced Imaging Research Center (AIRC), the OADC neuroimaging lab has recently implemented advanced imaging sequences and analysis techniques to further our understanding of MRI markers associated with age-related changes in cognitive and motor function, including healthy aging, early cognitive decline, and imaging markers of vascular disease and white matter integrity. These advances, have allowed the OADC neuroimaging lab to collaborate and foster MRI research in brain aging both within and outside of OHSU. The OADC neuroimaging lab supports in vivo 3T MRI acquisition and analysis of AD and related disorders, with an additional focus on vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID). In addition to advanced in vivo MRI protocols, we have developed a 7T post-mortem imaging protocol of human brain tissue for the targeted sampling of MRI-defined regions of interest for histopathology. The recent addition of the OHSU Radionuclear Research Center (RRC) has enabled continued development efforts aimed at providing of novel neuroimaging technologies promoting AD-related research to the OHSU community, including tau-PET imaging. This application proposes to continue to consolidate and substantially build upon these advances by establishing an OADC neuroimaging core, that would include both in vivo and post-mortem MRI methods to detect early brain changes associated with cognitive decline in elderly at risk for dementia.
The Specific Aims of the proposed Neuroimaging Core are: 1) To obtain and make available for research, state of the art, neuroimaging acquisition and advanced MRI processing from OADC subjects, including: healthy controls, MCI, and those with AD and other dementias, 2) To obtain and make available for research, neuroimaging data on OADC subjects, and 3) To foster collaborative research involving neuroimaging, and enhance utilization of other core resources. Imaging research themes supported by the core will include: 1) healthy aging and early imaging markers of cognitive impairment, 2) the role of cerebrovascular disease on cognitive function and dementia risk, and 3) treatment and prevention trials aimed at maintaining cognition in the elderly. Ultimately, this neuroimaging core will provide the OADC with a much needed resource to pursue and develop novel MRI sequence and analysis techniques for current and future aging studies. In total, this neuroimaging core would greatly facilitate our ability to collaborate both within and outside OHSU to advance our understanding of age-related cognitive changes.
/Public Health Relevance: Neuroimaging Core The OADC has an extensive history of innovative and productive research in MRI markers of age-related cognitive decline, collaborating with numerous internal and external researchers conducting MRI studies investigating imaging biomarkers of dementia risk. An OADC neuroimaging core would expand such collaborations in order to foster advanced MRI aging research, with a specialized focus on: (1) early detection of change in order to define the transition to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early dementia, and (2) facilitating the development of effective therapies to prevent or limit these transitions.
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