Post-mortem Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectrometric Measures of Brain Regions in Patients with a Pathological Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease and Multi-infarct Dementia

In-vitro spectrometric measures were made of spin-lattice (T 1) and spin-spin (T 2) relaxation times of samples of grey and white matter from the brains of 15 patients with a pathological diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, 5 with multi-infarct dementia, and 11 non-demented subjects. Relaxation times were significantly greater in the parietal white matter and temporal white matter of patients with Alzheimer's disease compared with that of the other subjects. This was associated with an increase in tissue water content. These findings confirm measures obtained in some imaging studies.