Publications by authors named "B Orso"
Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has recently enabled to identify four distinct Alzheimer's disease (AD) subtypes: hippocampal sparing (HpSp), typical AD (tAD), limbic predominant (Lp), and minimal atrophy (MinAtr). To date, however, the natural history of these subtypes, especially regarding the presence of subjects switching to other MRI patterns and their clinical and biological differences, remains poorly understood.
Objective: To investigate the clinical and biological underpinnings of longitudinal atrophy pattern progression in AD.
The phenoconversion trajectory from idiopathic/isolated Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) towards either Parkinson's Disease (PD) or Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) is currently uncertain. We investigated the capability of baseline brain [F]FDG-PET in differentiating between iRBD patients eventually phenoconverting to PD or DLB, by deriving the denovoPDRBD-related pattern (denovoPDRBD-RP) from 32 de novo PD patients; and the denovoDLBRBD-RP from 30 de novo DLB patients, both with evidence of RBD at diagnosis. To explore [F]FDG-PET phenoconversion trajectories prediction power, we applied these two patterns on a group of 115 iRBD patients followed longitudinally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Cognitive reserve (CR) is an expression of brain resilience in response to damage. Education, occupational experience and leisure activities are thought to increase CR and have beneficial effects on global cognition and cognitive decline in Parkinson's disease (PD). We aimed to disclose brain metabolic and dopaminergic correlates of CR in de-novo PD patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Apathy unawareness in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is linked to differences between caregiver and patient assessments, potentially predicting progression to Alzheimer's dementia.
- Researchers studied 28 MCI patients, using the Apathy Evaluation Scale to gauge apathy levels from both perspectives, and analyzed brain activity via PET scans.
- Findings revealed that greater discrepancies in assessments correlated with lower metabolism in specific brain regions, indicating that apathy unawareness is tied to early limbic system disruptions rather than traditional pathways associated with apathy.
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates the effectiveness of the Italian Uniform Data Set Neuropsychological Test Battery (I-UDSNB) in differentiating between Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Alzheimer's Disease (AD), and healthy controls (HC).
- The research involved 137 patients randomly assigned to MCI, AD, and HC groups and employed statistical analyses to identify tests that effectively distinguished between these groups.
- Results indicated that specific episodic memory tests from the I-UDSNB, particularly the Craft Story and Five Words tests, showed significant differentiation between MCI, AD, and HC, confirming the battery's reliability for assessing cognitive decline.