Neuroimaging and Behavioral Neurology studies. Functional and structural neuroimaging are powerful instruments that have revolutionized our ability to study of the brain's higher cognitive and affective functions in health and disease. They are also valuable in revealing the basis of individual differences (traits) in cognitive and affective processing, vulnerability and resilience to disease. This past year, I performed voxel based morphometry analyses on structural MRI scans to explore the neuroanatomical variability associated with long-standing personality traits, which may explain why certain individuals are vulnerable to psychiatric disease, dementia or show inefficient psychological response mechanisms to systemic diseases. Specifically, I found neuroanatomical differences related to traits of religiosity (published in PloS One)and to the Five Factors of personality (currently under peer review). Finally, I performed a voxel based morphometry analysis in Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) participants and detected a significant decrease in the frontal corpus callosum size associated with alcohol consumption, controlling for dietary, demographic and cardiovascular risk factors (currently under peer review). This finding may help explain why this same region may develop degeneration and necrosis in alcoholism (Marchiafava-Bignami disease). Development of 3T MRI projects. Unlike clinical MRI imaging, scientific applications often utilize techniques that either requires de-novo development or modification of existing research or commercially available protocols before implementation in clinical studies. The purpose of the NIA protocol under the above title has been the development and refinement of MRI scanning procedures and methods at the NIA 3T MRI facility, before implementation in larger scale clinical research studies. Over this last year, this protocol was used to develop the following applications: a tissue segmentation algorithm for fat quantification in the abdomen and thigh, which will be used in the BLSA to assess the association of subcutaneous and visceral fat with markers of inflammation;a tissue segmentation algorithms for fat quantification in the thymus gland, which will be used in the study of growth hormone supplementation;phosphorus spectroscopy to assess the energy consumption of exercising muscle, which will be used in the BLSA;fMRI to assess the process for making personality judgments about self and others;and development of resting state fMRI and brain spectroscopy.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Investigator-Initiated Intramural Research Projects (ZIA)
Project #
1ZIAAG000966-03
Application #
8177688
Study Section
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
Budget End
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2010
Total Cost
$711,883
Indirect Cost
Name
National Institute on Aging
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
State
Country
Zip Code
Mullins, Roger; Reiter, David; Kapogiannis, Dimitrios (2018) Magnetic resonance spectroscopy reveals abnormalities of glucose metabolism in the Alzheimer's brain. Ann Clin Transl Neurol 5:262-272
Mullins, Roger J; Diehl, Thomas C; Chia, Chee W et al. (2017) Insulin Resistance as a Link between Amyloid-Beta and Tau Pathologies in Alzheimer's Disease. Front Aging Neurosci 9:118
Willette, Auriel A; Modanlo, Nina; Kapogiannis, Dimitrios et al. (2015) Insulin resistance predicts medial temporal hypermetabolism in mild cognitive impairment conversion to Alzheimer disease. Diabetes 64:1933-40
Willette, Auriel A; Kapogiannis, Dimitrios (2015) Does the brain shrink as the waist expands? Ageing Res Rev 20:86-97
Kapogiannis, Dimitrios; Deshpande, Gopikrishna; Krueger, Frank et al. (2014) Brain networks shaping religious belief. Brain Connect 4:70-9
Willette, Auriel A; Calhoun, Vince D; Egan, Josephine M et al. (2014) Prognostic classification of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease: MRI independent component analysis. Psychiatry Res 224:81-8
Kapogiannis, Dimitrios; Reiter, David A; Willette, Auriel A et al. (2013) Posteromedial cortex glutamate and GABA predict intrinsic functional connectivity of the default mode network. Neuroimage 64:112-9
Kapogiannis, Dimitrios; Sutin, Angelina; Davatzikos, Christos et al. (2013) The five factors of personality and regional cortical variability in the Baltimore longitudinal study of aging. Hum Brain Mapp 34:2829-40
Kapogiannis, Dimitrios; Kisser, Jason; Davatzikos, Christos et al. (2012) Alcohol consumption and premotor corpus callosum in older adults. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol 22:704-10
Makrogiannis, Sokratis; Ramachandran, Ramona; Fishbein, Kenneth W et al. (2011) Towards segmentation of the thymus in fat and water parametric MR images. Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc 2011:8078-81

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