Entorhinal cortex disruption causes memory deficit in early Alzheimer's disease as shown by PET

Voxel-based mapping of the correlations between cognitive scores and restin g-state brain glucose utilization measured by PET has recently emerged as a novel way to reveal in living patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) the n eural systems whose disruption underlies particular neuropsychological, esp ecially mnemonic, deficits. We have now applied this approach using a novel cognitive paradigm designed to selectively assess verbal episodic memory, and show that in early AD disruption of the left entorhinal cortex underlie s this memory deficit, consistent with post mortem data showing that this b rain area is affected earliest and most severely by tau pathology in AD. Ne uroReport 12:683-685 (C) 2001 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.