Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Mild to Moderate Alzheimer Disease and Amnesic Mild Cognitive Impairment

摘要

Since the human brain is organized into parallel, interacting systems, understanding how they behave in neurodegenerative pathologies may lead to seminal advances in neurosciences. In the last 20 years, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become a predominant technique to evaluate brain function and neuronal functional connectivity (FC) [1, 2]. FC can be defined as the co-activation over time between spatially distinct cerebral areas that show synchronized low frequency fluctuations in cerebral blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal at fMRI, and can be assessed by resting-state fMRI (RS-fMRI) [3]. This technique allows to explore the so called Resting State Networks (RSNs), whose dynamics are independent from external stimuli and reflect intrinsic functional properties [3,4].