A modern perspective on some of the most highly cited JNNP papers of all time: Atrophy of medial temporal lobes on MRI in 'probable' Alzheimer's disease and normal ageing: Diagnostic value and neuropsychological correlates

摘要

In the last decades of the previous century, interest in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease (AD) was rising. At the same time, MRI was being discovered as an exciting, non-invasive, high resolution method to study brain changes in vivo. Autopsy studies had shown that the medial temporal lobe structures, including the hippocampus, were the structures affected earliest and most severely in AD.1 The first quantitative MRI studies assessing hippocampal volumes in AD described a volume reduction of the hippocampus of up to 40% in AD patients compared with control subjects. Since volumetric analysis of brain structures on MRI scans is a time consuming process which is not routinely available, the need arose to have a more user friendly alternative; a quantitative visual rating scale. In the early 1990s, I had been offered the possibility of doing a six month research fellowship while in my training period of neurology at the Department of Radiology led by Professor Jaap Valk.