Neuroanatomy of social Function in FTD

这项建议的目的是支持候选人发展必要的技能，以进行以患者为导向的行为神经科学研究。培训部分包括各种定量核磁共振分析方法的指导性技能发展，以及行为神经学、高级生物统计学、神经网络建模和科学严谨和负责任的研究方面的课程作业和指导性培训。这些神经学/医学技能旨在补充申请人以前在心理和神经心理学评估和研究方面的培训。拟议的研究计划将支持候选人这些技能的发展，使她有机会研究社会行为的神经解剖学和神经心理学基础 额颞性痴呆(FTD)患者。虽然这种疾病早期会引起社会功能的戏剧性变化，并伴有额叶、颞叶和杏仁核不同模式的脑萎缩，但在系统量化社会变化或将社会功能与特定大脑区域联系起来方面几乎没有做过什么工作。通过这项建议，将收集75名FTD患者和25名健康对照的社会和人际功能数据，使用社会认知的神经心理测试，向家庭成员发放问卷，以及临床行为观察。这些受试者的MRI扫描将提供给候选人使用手动和自动感兴趣区域(ROI)和基于体素的形态测量(VBM)分析进行定量分析。加州大学旧金山分校记忆和衰老中心受试者的一般神经心理评估数据也将用于分析 与社交数据相结合。具体的假设是：1)右前颞叶体积的减少与人际温暖的丧失和对他人的移情取向相对应；2)右背外侧前额叶体积的减少与社会推理的扭曲和对社会情境的不准确解释相对应。它还假设，3)移情能力的差异和4)自信的差异将通过与假设的认知模型相对应的认知功能的神经心理测试的分数来预测，并且这些模型可以通过与脑组织丢失的形态计量分析相结合的分析来验证。

The objective of this proposal is to support the candidate's development of skills necessary to perform patient-oriented research in behavioral neuroscience. The training component includes the mentored development of skills in various methods of quantitative MRI analysis, and includes coursework and mentored training in behavioral neurology, advanced biostatistics, neural network modeling, and the scientifically rigorous and responsible conduct of research. These neurologic/medical skills are intended to complement the applicant's previous training in psychological and neuropsychological assessment and research. The proposed research plan will support the candidate's development of these skills by giving her the opportunity to investigate the neuroanatomical and neuropsychological substrates of social behavior with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients. Though this disease causes early and often dramatic changes in social functioning along with diverse patterns of brain atrophy in the frontal lobes, temporal lobes, and amygdala, little has been done to either systematically quantify the social changes or to link social features to specific brain areas. Through this proposal, data on social and interpersonal functioning will be collected on 75 FTD patients and 25 healthy controls using neuropsychological tests of social cognition, questionnaires administered to family members, and clinical behavioral observation. These subjects' MRI scans will be made available to the candidate for quantitative analysis using manual and automated region of interest (ROI) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analyses. Data from subjects' general neuropsychological evaluations at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center will also made available for analysis in conjunction with the social data. The specific hypotheses are that 1) decreased right anterior temporal lobe volume will correspond with loss of interpersonal warmth and empathic orientation to others, 2) Decreased right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex volume will correspond to distortion of social reasoning and inaccurate interpretation of social situations. It is also hypothesized that 3) variance in empathy, and 4) variance in assertiveness, will be predicted by scores on neuropsychological tests of cognitive functions corresponding to hypothesized cognitive models, and that these models can be validated via analysis in conjunction with morphometry analyses of brain tissue loss.