John C. Morris, M.D. (Director)

DEPARTMENT OF Neurology
David Balota, Ph.D.; David M. Holtzman, M.D.; Daniel W. McKeel Jr., M.D.; J. Philip Miller, Ph.D.; Martha Storandt, Ph.D.
Keywords: aging, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, cognitive assessments, biomarkers

Our program project has been active for more than 20 years. We have focused on the clinical, psychometric, and neuropathologic correlates of dementia of Alzheimer’s type (DAT) in comparison with healthy aging; a new thrust addresses preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. Our work is supported by cores that recruit, enroll and clinically assess subjects annually to supply all projects; provide longitudinal cognitive assessments of subjects; perform postmortem examinations for clinicopathological correlation for all studies and provide appropriate tissue and data; oversee data management and provide statistical analysis; and collect structural imaging data on our cohort to visualize change in anatomy associated with cognitive decline. Project 1 (“Dementia Assessment in the Community,” Dr. J.C. Morris) evaluates a modified version of our informant-based research assessment in two community settings. Project 2 (“Novel Biomarkers to Predict Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. D.M. Holtzman) examines potential novel biomarkers (Ab40/Ab42 ratio, CSF sulfatides) and other variables to predict presence and progression of AD. Project 3 (“Attention Profiles in Healthy Aging and Early Stage DAT,” Dr. D. Balota) explores the subcomponents of attention as early indicators of DAT and individual attentional profiles in both variability in performance and personality characteristics. Project 4 (“Predicting Cognitive Decline in Healthy Elders,” Dr. J.G. Csernansky) evaluates the ability of sensitive neuroimaging measures to discriminate aging and very mild DAT. Together, these projects and their supporting cores will define very mild DAT in comparison with healthy brain aging and address the issue of detecting preclinical disease.