• Korean Journal of Radiology
• /
• 제24권11호
• /
• pp.1131-1141
• /
• 2023

Objective: Cortical iron deposition has recently been shown to occur in Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, we aimed to evaluate how cortical gray matter iron, measured using quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), differs in the clinical cognitive impairment spectrum. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study evaluated 73 participants (mean age ± standard deviation, 66.7 ± 7.6 years; 52 females and 21 males) with normal cognition (NC), 158 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 48 patients with AD dementia. The participants underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging using a three-dimensional multi-dynamic multi-echo sequence on a 3-T scanner. We employed a deep neural network (QSMnet+) and used automatic segmentation software based on FreeSurfer v6.0 to extract anatomical labels and volumes of interest in the cortex. We used analysis of covariance to investigate the differences in susceptibility among the clinical diagnostic groups in each brain region. Multivariable linear regression analysis was performed to study the association between susceptibility values and cognitive scores including the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Results: Among the three groups, the frontal (P < 0.001), temporal (P = 0.004), parietal (P = 0.001), occipital (P < 0.001), and cingulate cortices (P < 0.001) showed a higher mean susceptibility in patients with MCI and AD than in NC subjects. In the combined MCI and AD group, the mean susceptibility in the cingulate cortex (β = -216.21, P = 0.019) and insular cortex (β = -276.65, P = 0.001) were significant independent predictors of MMSE scores after correcting for age, sex, education, regional volume, and APOE4 carrier status. Conclusion: Iron deposition in the cortex, as measured by QSMnet+, was higher in patients with AD and MCI than in NC participants. Iron deposition in the cingulate and insular cortices may be an early imaging marker of cognitive impairment related neurodegeneration.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
• /
• 제25권2호
• /
• pp.214-215
• /
• 2024

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• /
• 제31권3호
• /
• pp.121-130
• /
• 2020

Objectives: We investigated the differences in cognitive and emotional empathic ability between adolescents and adults, and the differences of the brain activation during cognitive and emotional empathy tasks. Methods: Adolescents (aged 13-15 years, n=14) and adults (aged 19-29 years, n=17) completed a range of empathic ability questionnaires and were scanned functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during both cognitive and emotional empathy task. Differences in empathic ability and brain activation between the groups were analyzed. Results: Both cognitive and emotional empathic ability were significantly lower in the adolescent compared to the adult group. Comparing the adolescent to the adult group showed that brain activation was significantly greater in the right transverse temporal gyrus (BA 41), right insula (BA 13), right superior parietal lobule (BA 7), right precentral gyrus (BA 4), and right thalamus whilst performing emotional empathy tasks. No brain regions showed significantly greater activation in the adolescent compared to the adult group while performing cognitive empathy task. In the adolescent group, scores of the Fantasy Subscale in the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, which reflects cognitive empathic ability, negatively correlated with activity of right superior parietal lobule during emotional empathic situations (r=-0.739, p=0.006). Conclusion: These results strongly suggest that adolescents possess lower cognitive and emotional empathic abilities than adults do and require compensatory hyperactivation of the brain regions associated with emotional empathy or embodiment in emotional empathic situation. Compensatory hyperactivation in the emotional empathy-related brain areas among adolescents are likely associated with their lower cognitive empathic ability.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• /
• 제25권3호
• /
• pp.164-171
• /
• 2021

Purpose: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a prodromal stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Brain atrophy in this disease spectrum begins in the medial temporal lobe structure, which can be recognized by magnetic resonance imaging. To overcome the unsatisfactory inter-observer reliability of visual evaluation, quantitative brain volumetry has been developed and widely investigated for the diagnosis of MCI and AD. The aim of this study was to assess the prediction accuracy of quantitative brain volumetry using a fully automated segmentation software package, NeuroQuant^®, for the diagnosis of MCI. Materials and Methods: A total of 418 subjects from the Korean Brain Aging Study for Early Diagnosis and Prediction of Alzheimer's Disease cohort were included in our study. Each participant was allocated to either a cognitively normal old group (n = 285) or an MCI group (n = 133). Brain volumetric data were obtained from T1-weighted images using the NeuroQuant software package. Logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses were performed to investigate relevant brain regions and their prediction accuracies. Results: Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that normative percentiles of the hippocampus (P < 0.001), amygdala (P = 0.003), frontal lobe (P = 0.049), medial parietal lobe (P = 0.023), and third ventricle (P = 0.012) were independent predictive factors for MCI. In ROC analysis, normative percentiles of the hippocampus and amygdala showed fair accuracies in the diagnosis of MCI (area under the curve: 0.739 and 0.727, respectively). Conclusion: Normative percentiles of the hippocampus and amygdala provided by the fully automated segmentation software could be used for screening MCI with a reasonable post-processing time. This information might help us interpret structural MRI in patients with cognitive impairment.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• /
• 제27권3호
• /
• pp.196-206
• /
• 2016

Objectives: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are considered to have problems with empathy. It has recently been suggested that there are two systems for empathy; cognitive and emotional. We aimed to investigate the neural response to cognitive and emotional empathy and elucidate the neurobiological aspects of empathy in patients with ASD. Methods: We recruited patients with ASD (N=17, ASD group) and healthy controls (HC) (N=22, HC group) for an functional magnetic resonance imaging study. All of the subjects were scanned while performing cognitive and emotional empathy tasks. The differences in brain activation between the groups were assessed by contrasting their neural activity during the tasks. Results: During both tasks, the ASD group showed greater neural activities in the bilateral occipital area compared to the HC group. The ASD group showed more activation in the bilateral precunei only during the emotional empathy task. No brain regions were more activated in the HC group than in the ASD group during the cognitive empathy task. While performing the emotional empathy task, the HC group exhibited greater neural activities in the left middle frontal gyrus and right anterior cingulate gyrus than the ASD group. Conclusion: This study showed that the brain regions associated with cognitive and emotional empathy in ASD patients differed from those in healthy individuals. The results of this study suggest that individuals with ASD might have defects both in cognitive empathy and in emotional empathy.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• /
• 제24권1호
• /
• pp.30-37
• /
• 2020

Purpose: Preterm infants are at high risk for adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been proposed as a means of predicting neurodevelopmental outcomes in this population. It is controversial whether diffuse excessive high signal intensity (DEHSI) represents damage to the white matter or delayed myelination in preterm infants. This study investigated MRI findings for predicting the severity of neurodevelopmental outcomes and assessing whether preterm infants with DEHSI near term-equivalent age have abnormal neurodevelopmental outcomes. Materials and Methods: Preterm infants (n = 64, gestational age at birth < 35 weeks) undergoing brain MRI near term-equivalent age and subsequent neurodevelopmental outcomes were evaluated between 18 and 24 months of age. The associations of MRI findings and the risk of severe cognitive delay, severe psychomotor delay, cerebral palsy (CP), and neurosensory impairment were analyzed. The associations of DEHSI with risks of severe cognitive delay, severe psychomotor delay, CP, and neurosensory impairment (hearing or visual impairment) were analyzed. Outcome data were evaluated by logistic regression and the Fisher's exact test. Results: There were significant associations between abnormal white matter findings and delayed mental development, delayed psychomotor development, neurosensory impairment, and presence of CP. The presence of DEHSI was not correlated with delayed neurodevelopmental outcomes or presence of CP. In multivariate logistic regression analyses, cystic encephalomalacia, punctate lesion, loss of white matter volume and ventricular dilation were significantly associated with CP. Conclusion: Abnormal MRI findings near term-equivalent age in preterm infants predict adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. No significant association between DEHSI and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes was demonstrated.

• 한국멀티미디어학회논문지
• /
• 제20권2호
• /
• pp.205-215
• /
• 2017

The brain magnetic resonance images (MRI) is an important imaging biomarker in Alzheimer's disease (AD) as the cerebral atrophy has been shown to strongly associate with cognitive symptoms. The decrease of volume estimates in different structures of the medial temporal lobe related to memory correlates with the decline of cognitive functions in neurodegenerative diseases. During the past decades several methods have been developed for quantifying the disease related atrophy of hippocampus from MRI. Special effort has been dedicated to separate AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) related modifications from normal aging for the purpose of early detection and prediction. We trained a multi-class support vector machine (SVM) with probabilistic outputs on a sample (n = 58) of 20 normal controls (NC), 19 individuals with MCI, and 19 individuals with AD. The model was then applied to the cross-validation of same data set which no labels were known and the predictions. This study presents data on the association between MRI quantitative parameters of hippocampus and its quantitative structural changes examination use on the classification of the diseases.

• Journal of Medicine and Life Science
• /
• 제15권2호
• /
• pp.89-94
• /
• 2018

Cerebral autosomal-dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is inherited microangiopathy caused by mutations in the Notch3 gene. Typical findings from brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) include subcortical lacunes, extensive white matter change and cerebral microbleeds(CMBs). CMBs are indicative of bleeding-prone microangiopathy. Despite some studies investigating the association between lacunes and cognitive dysfunction in CADASIL, few studies have examined the relationship between cognitive dysfunction and CMBs. We sought to assess whether CMBs are associated with cognitive dysfunction in CADASIL. This study enrolled 83 consecutive patients with CADASIL between April 2012 and January 2014. Their degree of cognitive dysfunction was assessed by the Korean version of the CERAD neuropsychological assessment battery, digit span test, and the Stroop test. A 3.0-T MRI was used to obtain T1-weighted, fluid-attenuated inversion recovery, and susceptibility weighted images. In multiple logistic regression analysis, the grade of CMBs influenced tests of memory dysfunction (p=0.003). Three or more lacunes correlated with dysfunction in the executive domain (p=0.013) and attention domain (p=0.005). White matter hyperintensity (WMH) was an independent predictor of executive dysfunction (p=0.001). These findings suggest that in addition to lacunes, CMBs and WMHs may be useful imaging markers to associated with cognitive dysfunction in CADASIL.

• 대한자기공명의과학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 대한자기공명의과학회.한국자기공명학회 2005년도 공동학술대회
• /
• pp.45-46
• /
• 2005

• 한국초등과학교육학회지:초등과학교육
• /
• 제26권1호
• /
• pp.49-62
• /
• 2007

The higher cognitive functions of the human brain including teaming are hypothesized to be selectively distributed across large-scale neural networks interconnected to the cortical and subcortical areas. Recently, advances in functional imaging have made it possible to visualize the brain areas activated by certain cognitive activities in vivo. Neural substrates for teaming and motivation have also begun to be revealed. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides a non-invasive indirect mapping of cerebral activity, based on the blood- oxygen level dependent (BOLD) contrast which is based on the localized hemodynamic changes following neural activities in certain areas of the brain. The fMRI method is now becoming an essential tool used to define the neuro-functional mechanisms of higher brain functions such as memory, language, attention, learning, plasticity and emotion. Further research in the field of education will accelerate the verification of the effects on loaming or help in the selection of model teaching strategies. Thus, the purpose of this study was to review brain study methods using fMRI in science education. In conclusion, a number of possible strategies using fMRI for the study of elementary science education were suggested.