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. 2003 Jan;74(1):44-50.
doi: 10.1136/jnnp.74.1.44.

fMRI studies of associative encoding in young and elderly controls and mild Alzheimer's disease

R A Sperling  1 , J F Bates, E F Chua, A J Cocchiarella, D M Rentz, B R Rosen, D L Schacter, M S Albert
Affiliations

fMRI studies of associative encoding in young and elderly controls and mild Alzheimer's disease

R A Sperling et al. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2003 Jan.

Abstract

Objective: To examine alterations in patterns of brain activation seen in normal aging and in mild Alzheimer's disease by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an associative encoding task.

Methods: 10 young controls, 10 elderly controls, and seven patients with mild Alzheimer's disease were studied using fMRI during a face-name association encoding task. The fMRI paradigm used a block design with three conditions: novel face-name pairs, repeated face-name pairs, and visual fixation.

Results: The young and elderly controls differed primarily in the pattern of activation seen in prefrontal and parietal cortices: elderly controls showed significantly less activation in both superior and inferior prefrontal cortices but greater activation in parietal regions than younger controls during the encoding of novel face-name pairs. Compared with elderly controls, the Alzheimer patients showed significantly less activation in the hippocampal formation but greater activation in the medial parietal and posterior cingulate regions.

Conclusions: The pattern of fMRI activation during the encoding of novel associations is differentially altered in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease compared with normal aging.

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