We are very happy to announce that Jorne Laton obtained a start-up grant from the Stichting Alzheimer Onderzoek. This grant will be used within the DetectDem project:
The structure of the brain tells us a lot about its state and is very helpful in making a diagnosis, but it is not able to tell us much about expected progression, nor about the effect on cognitive functioning. To investigate that, we need to look at the activity in the brain, and, in the case of Alzheimer's, epileptiform activity is of big interest as it is for many people one of the precursors of the disease.
We will record this activity with high precision, in space and time, with the best method available today: magnetoencephalography (MEG). This measuring technique, along with electroencephalography (EEG), has already shown its value in epilepsy, enabling not only diagnosis (EEG/MEG) but also prediction of epileptic seizures (EEG). We will derive the 1/f rate from the MEG data, which reflects the excitation/inhibition ratio, which in turn is a promising biomarker for cognitive decline.
In addition to these MEG measurements, this grant will be used to include FDG-PET scans in this project.