SPECT Findings on Psychiatric Symptoms in Alzheimer's Disease

OBJECTIVES: The course of Alzheimer's disease is often complicated by psychiatric symptoms including depression, delusion and hallucination. And these psychiatric symptoms may be due to neuropathological changes of the disease itself. This study examined whether psychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer's disease are associated with cerebral perfusion using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). METHODS: Supratentorial transaxial perfusion measurements were obtained in frontal, anterior temporal, posterior temporoparietal and occipital cortical areas in both hemispheres, in a baseline population of 29 mild to moderately impaired AD patients. We interviewed all the patients and their primary caregivers to assess their current and past psychiatric functioning. To compare the SPECT findings, all the patients were divided into two groups by presence of depression, delusion, hallucination and illusion, of which symptoms were explored separately. RESULTS: The patients with hallucination had hypoperfusion of both the posterior temporoparietal and the occipital regions of interest, compared with scans of the patients without hallucination. And in other symptom profiles, there was no difference in SPECT findings between the patients with symptoms and without symptoms. CONCLUSION: Psychotic patients with Alzheimer's disease had a pattern of cerebral perfusion deficits, which is different from that of nonpsychotic patients. This finding suggests that specific patterns of cerebral dysfunction probably be related to the specific psychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer's disease.

Specific SPECT Findings in Alzheimer's Dementia

OBJECTIVES: Single photon emission computed tomography is a practical modality for the study of physiologic cerebral activity in vivo. So to improve the diagnostic utility of brain single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in Alzheimer's disease (AD). we evaluated an objective method of differentiating patients and healthy elderly controls using a semiquantitive image analysis protocol. METHODS: Supratentorial transaxial perfusion measurements were obtained in frontal, anterior temoral, posterior temporoparietal and occipital cortical areas in both hemispheres, in a baseline population of 14 healthy elderly controls and 19 mild to moderately impaired AD patients as well as 9 cases of vascular dementia. RESULTS: Statistically significant hypoperfusion was noted in both posterior temporoparietal regions of interest in the AD group compared with controls. And also hypoperfusion in left posterior temporoparietal area was found in the vascular dementia group compared with controls. Several correlations between perfusion ratio in some cortical area and MMSE score, BDS score and duration of disease in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. CONCLUSION: We found that all subjects with AD demostrated flow deficits in temporoparietal cortex bilaterally, and that the cortical-to-cerebellar ratio in bilateral temporoparietal region allowed the differentiation of all patients with AD from both controls and from the patients with vascular dementia. And ratio in specific region showed a correlation with cognitive function, disease severity and duration ing the AD group. Single photon emission computed tomography appears to be useful in the differential diagnosis of dementia and reflects clinical features of the disease.

Defense mechanisms and coping strategies in Hwabyung / 신경정신의학

No abstract available.

Effects of single and repeated electroconvulsive shock on the hypothalamus and brain stem contents of monoamine metabolites in mice / 신경정신의학

No abstract available.