Connectivity and cognition in neuropsychiatric disorders with special emphasis on Alzheimer's disease and Chorea Huntington

摘要

This issue opens with an invited review by Teipel et al. 1 discussing the use of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in the highly comorbid Alzheimer's disease (AD) and affective disorders. DTI allows the examination of structural brain connectivity and until now has been widely used to investigate impairment of intracortical projection tracts, which has been hypothesized to be the basis of cognitive dysfunction. Analyses of large scale data revealed white matter abnormalities in AD. Fewer DTI studies focused on affective disorders, e.g., bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder with inconsistent results. Larger and more homogenous groups of patients would allow the detection of subtle differences and avoid false-negative results. Applying other techniques could also open new possibilities for studying the brain network. Diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) offers better resolution than DTI, but is rarely used due to its limited availability, software requirements and long duration of analysis.