Neuroimaging Core

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Project Summary: Neuroimaging Core The Oregon Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (OADRC) has a 20+ year history of substantive longitudinal neuroimaging research, with a focus on healthy aging, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and MRI markers of early dementia in the elderly, and includes an extensive longitudinal database of over 3700 MRI’s from over 1000 subjects, most of whom are 80 years of age, or older. The OADRC has implemented advanced imaging sequences and analysis techniques to further our understanding of MRI markers associated with age-related changes in cognitive and motor function, including healthy aging, early cognitive decline, and imaging markers of vascular disease and white matter integrity. These advances have allowed the OADRC to collaborate and foster MRI research in brain aging both within and outside of OHSU. The OADRC Neuroimaging Core consolidates the long-standing history of longitudinal neuroimaging of the oldest old, and more recent collaborations and innovations in neuroimaging. The Neuroimaging Core supports in vivo 3T MRI acquisition and analysis of studies investigating Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, with an additional focus on vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID). In addition to advanced in vivo MRI protocols, the Neuroimaging Core has developed a 7T post-mortem (PM) imaging protocol of human brain tissue for the targeted sampling of MRI-defined regions of interest for histopathology. Imaging research themes supported by the core will include: 1) healthy aging and early imaging markers of cognitive impairment, 2) the role of cerebrovascular disease on cognitive function and dementia risk, and 3) treatment and prevention trials aimed at maintaining cognition in the elderly. The Neuroimaging Core will provide essential resources to pursue and develop novel MRI sequence and analysis techniques for current and future aging studies and facilitate our ability to advance our understanding of age-related cognitive changes. The core will continue to consolidate and substantially build upon previous advances that include both in vivo and PM MRI methods to detect early brain changes associated with cognitive decline in elderly at risk for dementia. The Specific Aims of the proposed Neuroimaging Core are: 1. To obtain and make available for research, state of the art, neuroimaging acquisition and advanced MRI processing from OADRC subjects, including: healthy controls, MCI, and those with AD and other dementias, 2. To obtain and make available for research, neuroimaging data on OADRC subjects, and 3. To foster collaborative research involving neuroimaging, and enhance utilization of other core resources. !