| Grant number: | 16/19376-9 |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |
| Start date: | June 01, 2017 |
| End date: | February 29, 2020 |
| Field of knowledge: | Interdisciplinary Subjects |
| Agreement: | Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) |
| Principal Investigator: | João Ricardo Sato |
| Grantee: | Ana Paula Arantes de Andrade Bueno |
| Host Institution: | Centro de Matemática, Computação e Cognição (CMCC). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil |
| Associated scholarship(s): | 17/23020-8 - Papez circuit integrity and memory performance in ALS: development of a novel tool to assess episodic memory performance., BE.EP.DR |
Abstract Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are multisystem neurodegenerative disorders with overlapping clinical and pathological characteristics and lie, therefore, on a disease continuum. ALS was historically seen as a "pure" motor function disease, however many patients can present with full-blown dementia (ALS-FTD) or more subtle behavioural and cognitive changes. Importantly, ALS and FTD also share the same underlying proteinopathy with immunoreactive inclusions of TDP-43 in many brain areas, but often focused around the temporal lobes. This is nicely corroborated by neuroimaging studies showing grey and white matter changes in the same brain regions. Recent studies in FTD highlight that these temporal lobe changes, including the Papez circuit, can be severely affected in the patients and can cause significant symptoms, such as episodic memory and emotion recognition deficits. To our knowledge, however, despite the reports of memory and emotional processing deficits, as well as structural changes in the hippocampus and frontotemporal regions in ALS patients, none of the studies has investigated the integrity of the complete classical neural circuit of anatomic substrates for memory processing and emotions: the Papez circuit. We aim to investigate the integrity of gray matter and white matter of the Papez circuit in ALS patients using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and compare to controls and FTD patients. Further, we will investigate how functional connectivity might be also affected across the circuit in the ALS patients compared to controls. The objective is to identify if there is a pattern of structural and functional brain changes in ALS patients and how it relates to the symptomology, in particular in regards to memory and emotion recognition. These findings will not only improve diagnosis and management of ALS but also will allow potentially to be used as an outcome measure for future intervention studies. In turn, this will allow better clinical service provision, as well as better management of the disease for patients and their families (AU) | |
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