Maria-Luisa Gorno-Tempini

Neuroanatomical correlates of impaired recognition of emotion in dementia

Neurodegenerative diseases frequently affect brain regions important for emotional processing, offering a valuable opportunity to study the effects of brain injury on emotion. The current study examined the neuroanatomical correlates of impaired recognition of emotions in patients with neurodegenerative disease. Performance on recognition of facial expressions, as measured by the Florida Affect Battery, was correlated with regional changes in gray matter tissue content in 50 patients with neurodegenerative disease using voxel-based morphometry. Recognition accuracy in the group was poor for negative emotions (fear, anger and sadness) and good for happiness, consistent with previous studies. For negative emotions, a region in the right lateral inferior temporal gyrus (Brodmans area (BA) 20) extending into the right middle temporal gyrus (BA 21) was correlated with accuracy. This effect appeared to be strongest for sadness, which was also independently correlated with atrophy in the superior temporal gyrus. These data suggest that regions in the right lateral and inferolateral temporal lobe are important for visual processing of negative emotions from faces and that functioning of this right temporal network is most critical for recognition of sad faces.

The Neural Correlates of Verbal and Nonverbal Semantic Processing Deficits in Neurodegenerative Disease

ObjectiveTo investigate the neural correlates of verbal and nonverbal semantic processing in neurodegenerative disease. BackgroundSemantic memory is often impaired in neurodegenerative disease. Neuropsychologic and functional neuroimaging studies suggest that the semantic processing of verbal and nonverbal stimuli may depend on partially distinct brain networks. MethodsWe examined this possibility using voxel-based morphometry to correlate performance on verbal and nonverbal versions of a semantic association task with regional gray matter atrophy in 144 individuals with a variety of neurodegenerative diseases. ResultsResults showed that, regardless of stimulus type, semantic processing correlated with atrophy in both temporal lobes. In addition, material-specific correlations were found in left temporal regions for verbal stimuli and the right fusiform gyrus for nonverbal stimuli. ConclusionsThese results provide evidence for a differential role of the left and right hemispheres in the extraction of semantic information from verbal and pictorial representations. Areas in right inferior temporal lobe may be necessary to access structural descriptions of visually presented objects.

The practical utility of amyloid and FDG-PET in an academic dementia center

Pascual S anchez Juan, Pia Ghosh, Jayne Hagen, Benno Gesierich, Maya Henry, Maria-Luisa Gorno-Tempini, Bruce Miller, William Jagust, Gil Rabinovici, University Hospital Marqu es de Valdecilla, Santander, Spain; UCSF Memory and Aging Center, San Francisco, California, United States; UCSF Memory and Aging Center, San Francisco, California, United States; University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States. Contact e-mail: psanchez@ humv.es

Data-driven regions of interest for longitudinal change in three variants of frontotemporal lobar degeneration

Longitudinal imaging of neurodegenerative disorders is a potentially powerful biomarker for use in clinical trials. In Alzheimers disease, studies have demonstrated that empirically derived regions of interest (ROIs) can provide more reliable measurement of disease progression compared with anatomically defined ROIs.

Language Disorders, Overview

Neurological insult to language regions (typically in the left hemisphere) of the brain results in aphasia, a general term for impairment affecting the ability to comprehend and/or produce language. Aphasia is generally grouped into nonfluent aphasias (typically in anterior portions of the brain) and fluent aphasias (typically in posterior portions of the brain). Nonfluent and fluent aphasias are further classified depending on the presentation of clinical symptoms. Severity of aphasia also varies but typically corresponds to extent of neurological damage.

Characteristics in logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia with PiB-PET–positive patients

Background: Today there are several competing hypotheses trying to provide the explanation of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The cholinergic hypothesis is derived from the theory of reduced synthesis of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, while the amyloid hypothesis is based on material analysis of senile plaques or in brain tissue. There are some other theories such as virus, inflammation, and oxidative stress, etc. Apparently those hypotheses have not located the real root of Alzheimer’s disease.Conclusions: In this presentation, the author proposes a rationalized theory of human brain activity mechanism. The theory is derived from basic thermodynamic principles of Gibbs free energy and functional group interactions. By elucidating human memory system and the other brain activity mechanisms, we may come to a better understanding of the pathophysiology of MCI and AD. Since human memory is stored basically as free energy in protein conformation structures, avoidance of energy deficiency may be the key to the problem. By focusing development of products providing optimal energy supply at critical period of life, we may lead to a real alleviation or even reverse the courses of MCI and AD.

IC-P1-068: Structural anatomy of environmental dependency syndrome in neurodegenerative disease

Dong Won Yang, Howard J Rosen, Maria-Luisa Gorno-Tempini, Bruce L. Miller, Joel H Kramer, Michael Weiner, Marc Sollberger, Memory and Aging Center, UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, USA; St. Mary’s Hospital, Neurology Department, Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea; UCSF Department of Neurology, San Francisco, CA, USA; San Francisco Veterans Affairs Hospital Magnetic Resonance Imaging Unit, San Francisco, CA, USA. Contact e-mail: neuroman@catholic.ac.kr