Publications by authors named "Sebastian Schuster"

Background And Objectives: 18-kDa translocator protein position-emission-tomography (TSPO-PET) imaging emerged for in vivo assessment of neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's disease (AD) research. Sex and obesity effects on TSPO-PET binding have been reported for cognitively normal humans (CN), but such effects have not yet been systematically evaluated in patients with AD. Thus, we aimed to investigate the impact of sex and obesity on the relationship between β-amyloid-accumulation and microglial activation in AD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Corticobasal syndrome (CBS) with underlying 4-repeat tauopathy is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by declining cognitive and motor functions. Biomarkers for assessing pathologic brain changes in CBS including tau-PET, 18 kDa translocator protein (TSPO)-PET, structural MRI, neurofilament light chain (NfL), or glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) have recently been evaluated for differential diagnosis and disease staging, yet their association with disease trajectories remains unclear. Therefore, we performed a head-to-head comparison of neuroimaging (tau-PET, TSPO-PET, structural MRI) and plasma biomarkers (NfL, GFAP) as prognostic tools for longitudinal clinical trajectories in β-amyloid (Aβ)-negative CBS.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Leftovers are particularly at risk of being discarded, and therefore a main component of household food waste. This study provides insights into sources of heterogeneity in leftover management behaviours, with a particular focus on the use of meal kits providing matched portion and ingredient sizes, and identifies consumer segments via a latent class analysis. We investigate whether belonging to a segment with positive attitudes toward leftovers, and engagement in conscious leftover management behaviours decreases the amounts of dinner leftovers and food waste.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

β-amyloid (Aβ) and tau aggregation as well as neuronal injury and atrophy (ATN) are the major hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and biomarkers for these hallmarks have been linked to neuroinflammation. However, the detailed regional associations of these biomarkers with microglial activation in individual patients remain to be elucidated. We investigated a cohort of 55 patients with AD and primary tauopathies and 10 healthy controls that underwent TSPO-, Aβ-, tau-, and perfusion-surrogate-PET, as well as structural MRI.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In recent years in vivo visualization of tau deposits has become possible with various PET radiotracers. The tau tracer [F]PI-2620 proved high affinity both to 3-repeat/4-repeat tau in Alzheimer's disease as well as to 4-repeat tau in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and corticobasal syndrome (CBS). However, to be clinically relevant, biomarkers should not only correlate with pathological changes but also with disease stage and progression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates how microglial activation, which is linked to neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's disease (AD), relates to the connectivity of brain regions in Aβ-positive early AD patients compared to healthy controls.
  • - Utilizing advanced imaging techniques like positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers found that microglial activation was more prominent in functionally connected brain areas in AD patients, correlating with cognitive decline.
  • - The findings suggest that, similar to tau pathology, microglial activation spreads along highly interconnected brain pathways, highlighting its potential role in the progression of neurodegeneration in AD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Corticobasal syndrome (CBS) is a rare neurodegenerative condition characterized by four-repeat tau aggregation in the cortical and subcortical brain regions and accompanied by severe atrophy. The aim of this study was to evaluate partial volume effect correction (PVEC) in patients with CBS compared to a control cohort imaged with the 18-kDa translocator protein (TSPO) positron emission tomography (PET) tracer [F]GE-180. Eighteen patients with CBS and 12 age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent [F]GE-180 PET.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • TSPO-PET tracers are affected by a genetic variation (rs6971-SNP), categorizing individuals into low-, medium-, and high-affinity binders (LABs, MABs, and HABs), but the clinical significance of the tracer [F]GE-180 remains uncertain.
  • A study compared the binding of [F]GE-180 in healthy brains versus those with neuro-oncological and neurodegenerative diseases, focusing on standardized uptake values (SUVs) across the three binding affinity groups.
  • The results indicated that LABs had significantly lower frontoparietal and cerebellar SUVs compared to MABs and HABs, while no major differences existed between the latter two groups,
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pragmatic theories of utterance interpretation share the assumption that listeners reason about alternative utterances that a speaker could have produced, but didn't. For such reasoning to be successful, listeners must have precise expectations about a speaker's production choices. This is at odds with the considerable variability across speakers that exists at all levels of linguistic representation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Heat stress transcription factors (HSFs) regulate transcriptional response to a large number of environmental influences, such as temperature fluctuations and chemical compound applications. Plant HSFs represent a large and diverse gene family. The HSF members vary substantially both in gene expression patterns and molecular functions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF