Hippocampal functional connectivity in Alzheimer’s disease: a resting state 7T fMRI study

Among the range of neuroimaging techniques available that may provide insight into Alzheimer’s disease (AD), resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) and functional connectivity has emerged as particularly useful in the early diagnosis of AD (de Vos et al., 2018). The hippocampus is one of the earliest affected brain regions in AD (Braak et al., 1993), with its degradation being a hallmark of AD in many structural and functional imaging studies. [...]we aimed to investigate whether the connectivity of the hippocampus with the rest of the brain is altered in AD patients compared to healthy individuals using a 7-Tesla MRI imaging. See PDF] To our knowledge, this is the first functional connectivity report in AD using ultra-high-field strength, 7-Tesla, rsfMRI which provides increased contrast-to-noise ratio and facilitates increased spatial resolution (Li et al., 2012), thus providing increased sensitivity and spatial specificity for the detection of pathological changes that might not be detectable at lower field strengths.