Central Lateral Thalamic Circuitry Abnormalities in Traumatic Brain Injury and Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

This grant aims to understand how the circuitry associated with the central lateral thalamic nucleus (CL) plays a role in enhancing the risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD) following a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Animal connectivity work shows that CL has strong connections with the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), which is heavily involved in both attention and memory. We hypothesize that the downregulation of CL in TBI leads to decreased activity in the rACC, which in turn downregulates the memory system and enhances the risk for AD. This will be tested by quantifying the connectivity strength between CL and rACC in resting-state fMRI and DTI neuroimaging data from Healthy Control versus TBI versus AD subjects from the ADNI and DoD-ADNI databases. We will then examine whether the CL-rACC connectivity strength inversely correlates with markers of AD (performance on the Logical Memory II test, global PET-amyloid burden, and amyloid and tau levels in the cerebrospinal fluid). In Year 2, we have finished the remaining Year 1 task (Major Task 1 Subtask 2) of defining subject-specific CL ROIs. We now have a library of all neuroimaging data and CL, rACC, and parahippocampal cortex (PHC) ROI definitions for all subjects. Major Task 2 Subtask 1 is complete, and Subtask 2 is in progress. The main accomplishment in Year 2 is establishing a working rsfMRI pipeline and generating the CL rsfMRI map for the TBI group. This map shows the expected CL connections with the dorsomedial PFC and striatum. Interestingly, it shows weak correlations with the rACC, consistent with our hypothesis. The next steps will generate CL rsfMRI maps for the Healthy Control and AD groups, and quantitatively and spatially compare them with that of the TBI group.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 01, 2023
Accession Number
AD1208697

Entities

People

  • Eun Y. Cho

Organizations

  • Stanford University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abnormalities
  • Abstracts
  • Alzheimer Disease
  • Biomedical Research
  • Brain
  • Brain Injuries
  • Cerebral Cortex
  • Databases
  • Department Of Defense
  • Diseases
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  • Medical Personnel
  • Neuroimaging
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Fields of Study

  • Biology
  • Medicine

Readers

  • Neuroscience
  • Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Cognitive Aging in the Guam and Border Populations Affected by Alzheimer's Disease and Tau-Associated Dementias.