Retrosplenial cortex (BA 29) volumes in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

Tan, Rachel H., Wong, Stephanie, Hodges, John R., Halliday, Glenda M. and Hornberger, Michael (2013) Retrosplenial cortex (BA 29) volumes in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's Disease. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 35 (3-4), 177 - 182. (doi:10.1159/000346392).

Abstract

Background: The retrosplenial cortex (RSC) is a crucial transit region between the hippocampus and cingulate cortex and has been implicated in spatial navigation and memory. Importantly, RSC atrophy is a predilection site of Alzheimer’s (AD) pathology, but there have been no studies assessing structural changes in the RSC in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Methods: A manual tracing method was used to calculate regional RSC volume in MRI scans from patients with bvFTD (n = 15) and AD (n = 15), as well as age- and sex-matched controls (n = 15). Results: RSC volumes were significantly reduced in the AD (p < 0.001), but not the bvFTD cohort (p > 0.1) compared to age-matched controls. RSC volumes discriminated bvFTD from AD in over 90% of the cases. Conclusion: These findings provide further evidence that RSC atrophy is specific to AD, which might explain the commonly observed spatial disorientation in this patient group.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Author: Michael Hornberger

Download statistics