Abstract
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects particularly memory function. Specifically, the neural system responsible for encoding and retrieval of the memory for facts and events (declarative memory) is dependent on anatomical structures located in the medial part of the temporal lobe (MTL). Clinical lesions as well as experimental evidence point that the hippocampal formation (hippocampus plus entorhinal cortex) and the adjacent cortex, both main components of the MTL, are the regions critical for normal declarative memory function. Neuroimage studies as ours, have taken advantage of the feasibility of manual segmentation of the gray matter volume, which correlates with memory impairment and clinical deterioration of Alzheimer’s disease patients. We wanted to explore the advantages of automatic segmentation tools, and present results based on one 3T MRI in a young subject. The automatic segmentation allowed a better discrimination between extracerebral structures and the surface of the brain, as well as an improvement both in terms of speed and reliability in the demarcation of different MTL structures, all of which play a key role in declarative memory processing. Based largely on our own nonhuman primate data on brain and hippocampal connections, we defined automatically the angular bundle in the MTL as the fibers containing the perforant path (interconnection and dialogue between the entorhinal cortex and its hippocampal termination. The speed and accuracy of the technique needs further development, but it seems to be promising enough for early detection of memory deficits associated to Alzheimer’s disease.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
- Entorhinal Cortex
- Medial Temporal Lobe
- Hippocampal Formation
- Automatic Segmentation
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Ashburner, J., Friston, K.J.: Unified segmentation. NeuroImage 26, 839–851 (2005)
Bach Cuadra, M., Cammoun, L., Butz, T., Cuisenaire, O., Thiran, J.: Comparison and validation of tissue modelization and statistical classification methods in T1-weighted MR brain images. IEEE Trans. on Medical Imgaging 24(12), 1548–1565 (2005)
Braak, H., Braak, E.: Staging of Alzheimer’s disease-related neurofibrillary changes. Neurobiol. Aging 16, 271–278 (1995)
García-Sierra, F., Wischik, C.M., Harrington, C.R., Luna-Muñoz, J., Mena, R.: Accumulation of C-terminally truncated tau protein associated with vulnerability of the perforant pathway in early stages of neurofibrillary pathology in Alzheimer’s disease. J. Chem. Neuroanat. 22, 65–77 (2001)
Hyman, B.T., Van Horsen, G.W., Damasio, A.R., Barnes, C.L.: Alzheimer’s disease: cell-specific pathology isolates the hippocampal formation. Science 225, 1168–1170 (1984)
Insausti, et al.: MR Volumetric Analysis of the Human Entorhinal, Perirhinal, and Temporopolar Cortices. Amer. J. Neuroradiol. 19, 656–671 (1998)
Insausti, R., Amaral, D.G.: The Human Hippocampal Formation. In: Paxinos, G., Mai, J. (eds.) En The Human Nervous System 2a Edición, pp. 871–912. Academic Press, San Diego (2004)
Insausti, R., Amaral, D.G.: Entorhinal cortex of the monkey: IV. Topographical and laminar organization of cortical afferents. J. Comp. Neurol. 509(6), 608–641 (2008)
Juottonen, et al.: Volumes of the Entorhinal and Perirhinal Cortices in Alzheimer’s Disease. Neurobiology of Aging 19, 15–22 (1998)
Kalus, P., Slotboom, J., Gallinat, J., Mahlberg, R., Cattapan-Ludewig, K., Wiest, R., Nyffeler, T., Buri, C., Federspiel, A., Kunz, D., Schroth, G., Kiefer, C.: Examining the gateway to the limbic system with diffusion tensor imaging: the perforant pathway in dementia. Neuroimage 30, 713–720 (2006)
Kirkby, D.L., Higgins, G.A.: Characterization of perforant path lesions in rodent models of memory and attention. Eur. J. Neurosci. 10, 823–838 (1998)
Stoub, T.R., de Toledo-Morrell, L., Stebbins, G.T., Leurgans, S., Bennett, D.A., Shah, R.C.: Hippocampal disconnection contributes to memory dysfunction in individuals at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A 103, 10041–10045 (2006)
Shukla, C., Bridges, L.R.: Tau, beta-amyloid and beta-amyloid precursor protein distribution in the entorhinal-hippocampal alvear and perforant pathways in the Alzheimer’s brain. Neurosci. Lett. 303, 193–197 (2001)
Takeda, T., Uchihara, T., Mochizuki, Y., Mizutani, T., Iwata, M.: Memory deficits in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients with dementia and degeneration of the perforant pathway A clinicopathological study. J. Neurol. Sci. 260, 225–230 (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Insausti, R., Rincón, M., González-Moreno, C., Artacho-Pérula, E., Díez-Peña, A., García-Saiz, T. (2009). Neurobiological Significance of Automatic Segmentation: Application to the Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease. In: Mira, J., Ferrández, J.M., Álvarez, J.R., de la Paz, F., Toledo, F.J. (eds) Bioinspired Applications in Artificial and Natural Computation. IWINAC 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5602. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02267-8_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02267-8_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-02266-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-02267-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)