Somatosensory responses in normal aging, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's disease.

As a part of a larger study of normal aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD), which included patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), we investigated the response to median nerve stimulation in primary and secondary somatosensory areas. We hypothesized that the somatosensory response would be relatively spared given the reported late involvement of sensory areas in the progression of AD. We applied brief pulses of electric current to left and right median nerves to test the somatosensory response in normal elderly (NE), MCI, and AD. MEG responses were measured and were analyzed with a semi-automated source localization algorithm to characterize source locations and timecourses. We found an overall difference in the amplitude of the response of the primary somatosensory source (SI) based on diagnosis. Across the first three peaks of the SI response, the MCI patients exhibited a larger amplitude response than the NE and AD groups (P < 0.03). Additional relationships between neuropsychological measures and SI amplitude were also determined. There was no significant difference in amplitude for the contralateral secondary somatosensory source across diagnostic category. These results suggest that somatosensory cortex is affected early in the progression of AD and may have some consequence on behavioral and functional measures.

Measuring nanopore size from the spin-lattice relaxation of CF4 gas.

The NMR 19F spin-lattice relaxation time constant T1 for CF4 gas is dominated by spin-rotation interaction, which is mediated by the molecular collision frequency. When confined to pores of approximately the same size or smaller than the bulk gas mean free path, additional collisions of molecules with the pore walls should substantially change T1. To develop a method for measuring the surface/volume ratio S/V by measuring how T1 changes with confinement, we prepared samples of known S/V from fumed silica of known mass-specific surface area and compressed to varying degrees into cylinders of known volume. We then measured T1 for CF4 in these samples at varying pressures, and developed mathematical models for the change in T1 to fit the data. Even though CF4 has a critical temperature below room temperature, we found that its density in pores was greater than that of the bulk gas and that it was necessary to take this absorption into account. We modeled adsorption in two ways, by assuming that the gas condenses on the pore walls, and by assuming that gas in a region near the wall is denser than the bulk gas because of a simplified attractive potential. Both models suggested the same two-parameter formula, to which we added a third parameter to successfully fit the data and thus achieved a rapid, precise way to measure S/V from the increase in T1 due to confinement in pores.