Publications by authors named "Tony Durbin"

The authors have developed a paradigm using positron emission tomography (PET) with multiple radiopharmaceutical tracers that combines measurements of cerebral metabolic rate of glucose (CMRGlc), cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO2), cerebral blood flow (CBF), and cerebral blood volume (CBV), culminating in estimates of brain aerobic glycolysis (AG). These in vivo estimates of oxidative and non-oxidative glucose metabolism are pertinent to the study of the human brain in health and disease. The latest positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) scanners provide time-of-flight (TOF) imaging and critical improvements in spatial resolution and reduction of artifacts.

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Metabolic connectivity (MC) has been previously proposed as the covariation of static [F]FDG PET images across participants, i.e., MC (ai-MC).

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The distribution of brain aerobic glycolysis (AG) in normal young adults correlates spatially with amyloid-beta (Aβ) deposition in individuals with symptomatic and preclinical Alzheimer disease (AD). Brain AG decreases with age, but the functional significance of this decrease with regard to the development of AD symptomatology is poorly understood. Using PET measurements of regional blood flow, oxygen consumption, and glucose utilization-from which we derive AG-we find that cognitive impairment is strongly associated with loss of the typical youthful pattern of AG.

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The gold-standard approach to quantifying dynamic PET images relies on using invasive measures of the arterial plasma tracer concentration. An attractive alternative is to employ an image-derived input function (IDIF), corrected for spillover effects and rescaled with venous plasma samples. However, venous samples are not always available for every participant.

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Article Synopsis
  • Sex differences affect brain structure and function during both development and aging, with notable implications for how we understand brain metabolism in adults.
  • A study using machine learning applied to brain PET imaging analyzed data from 205 cognitively normal adults aged 20 to 82, revealing that females consistently exhibit a younger metabolic brain age than males throughout adulthood.
  • These findings suggest that developmental factors contribute to sex differences in brain aging and highlight the significant individual variability in natural brain aging processes.
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Research of the human brain metabolism in vivo has largely focused on total glucose use (via fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography) and, until recently, did not examine the use of glucose outside oxidative phosphorylation, which is known as aerobic glycolysis (AG). AG supports important functions including biosynthesis and neuroprotection but decreases dramatically with aging. This multitracer positron emission tomography study evaluated the relationship between AG, total glucose use (CMRGlc), oxygen metabolism (CMRO), tau, and amyloid deposition in 42 individuals, including those at preclinical and symptomatic stages of Alzheimer's disease.

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Article Synopsis
  • The human brain shows overall decreases in metabolism with aging, but the specifics of how this affects brain activity patterns were unclear.
  • Researchers used PET scans to measure glucose uptake, oxygen use, and blood flow in healthy adults aged 20 to 82.
  • They found that as people age, brain glucose uptake decreases more significantly than oxygen use, altering the brain's aerobic glycolysis (AG) patterns, particularly in areas with high AG in younger adults.
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The earliest sites of brain atrophy in Alzheimer's disease are in the medial temporal lobe, following widespread cerebral cortical amyloid deposition. We assessed 74 cognitively normal participants with clinical measurements, amyloid-β-PET imaging, MRI, and a newly developed technique for MRI-based hippocampal subfield segmentation to determine the differential association of amyloid deposition and hippocampal subfield volume. Compared to amyloid-negative participants, amyloid-positive participants had significantly smaller hippocampal tail, presubiculum, subiculum, and total hippocampal gray matter volumes.

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