Structural alterations and their underlying substrates in correlations with “what” stream visual pathways in progression stages of Alzheimer's disease: Associative visual objective agnosia (AVOA)

Abstract

Introduction Visual agnosia is a promptly noticed neurological deficit in Alzheimer's disease (AD), affects the inferior temporal lobe, which leads an inability to perceive objects. The interconnection between the two cortices in visual ventral stream, the visual cortex (BA 17, 18, 19) and inferior temporal lobe (BA 20) explain how we perceive and recognize the objects, called associative object visual perception. We Team Neuron, focused on correlating the neural structural connectivity with associative visual agnosia in Alzheimer's patients using ;“Diffusion Tensor Imaging Tractography;”. The study involves fifty DTI datasets, both the sexes of Control and disease progression stages of AD, with age ranges from 50 to 90 years. Results On observation, the females displayed with progressive increase in the (number and volume) fibers among the cognitive declining stages of AD. But, the males, noticed with a bi-modal variation (number and volume) of fibers, within the disease progression stages of AD. Conclusion Although the statistical analysis was insignificant, it was noticed that the males are predominantly affected than females. The current observations, propose an insight to understand the bi-modal distribution of fibers in the male and progressive increase of fibers in the female, from the control to disease progression stages of AD. However, these findings need to be confirmed with functional and effective connectivity analysis for further understandings.