Research staff
PD Dr. P. Schönknecht, Dr. A. Hunt, Dr. M. Henze, Prof. Dr. U. Haberkorn, Prof. Dr. J. Schröder
Cooperation partner
- Clinic for Nuclear Medicine (University Medical Centre Heidelberg)
- Psychiatric University Hospital (University Medical Centre Heidelberg)
Background
Patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are characterized by a wide range of cognitive deficits in several neuropsychological areas. Medical imaging examinations explored a relation between atrophic changes in substructures of the medial temporal lobe and affected achievements of the episodic memory. Against the background of the assumption, that cognitive deficits are not only related to atrophic changes, but also can represent a synaptic dysfunction, in the actual project the neuropsychological performance was standardized surveyed in all patients (neuropsychological test battery Descerad) and compared with the cerebral glucose metabolism under resting conditions using the FDG-PET. In doing so the assumption was pursued, that the achievement of several neuropsychological areas, f.e. the episodic memory, language production and spatial sense, is significant correlated to diverse patterns of the cerebral glucose metabolism.
