Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Mri Investigations Of Metabolic And Structural Brain Changes In Alzheimer’S Disease And Vitamin D Deprivation, Dickson Wong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder of the brain that presents as progressive impairment across several cognitive domains. The biological mechanisms underlying the development of AD remain unclear, with amyloid-beta plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, calcium dysregulation, and oxidative stress all contributing to neurodegeneration in AD. Vitamin D (VitD) deficiency, a common condition in the elderly, may modulate these mechanisms and complicate the AD process. Due to this complicated pathogenesis, the diagnosis of AD requires subjective clinical judgement, staging of AD is challenging, and it remains difficult to predict when and who will progress to AD. The purpose of this thesis …

Functional Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy In First-Episode Schizophrenia: Measuring Glutamate And Glutathione Dynamics At 7-Tesla, Peter Jeon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Schizophrenia is a neuropsychiatric illness without known etiology or cure. Current efforts for symptom treatment still seem to leave a large portion of affected individuals without proper symptom management, with those experiencing symptom relief still having to wrestle with potential side-effects from medication trials. There has been growing evidence suggesting that glutamate and glutathione abnormalities hold major roles in development and manifestation of schizophrenia symptoms.

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) provides a non-invasive means to observe in-vivo brain chemistry, including glutamate and glutathione. By adding a functional component to an MRS paradigm (fMRS), such as the color-word Stroop task, it is …