Hearing and cognitive impairment: a functional evaluation of associative brain areas in patients affected by Alzheimer's disease.

We examined 131 diagnosed AD patients and a control group (CG) of 36 normal subjects. After a complete clinical investigation, focused on hearing function, all subjects underwent a brain FDG PET/CT. AD subjects vs CG showed reduced glucose consumption in BA 6,7,8,39, whereas we did not find differences in the primary auditory cortex. In AD, connectivity analyses showed a positive correlation of the primary auditory cortex with BA 6,8,21,31,39,40,42 and a negative correlation with BA 19, cerebellum and basal ganglia. Our findings suggest that neurological evaluation of patients with hearing loss might allow earlier (preclinical) identification of those affected by cognitive impairment. PMID: 31172935 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Functional Neurology - Category: Neurology Tags: Funct Neurol Source Type: research