Targeting Alzheimer’s Disease: Multiscale & Multimodal Imaging from Electrons to Neural Systems
Member-Initiated Symposium

ORGANIZERS: Russell Chan, Audrey Fan, Daniel Paech

Thursday, 16 May 2019

Session Number: MIS-23

Overview
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a growing global health issue, and imaging with MRI and PET has the potential to detect the disease earlier than ever before. However, to fully relate imaging observations to the underlying pathology and functional brain abnormalities requires multi-scale and multimodal studies in models of AD. This symposium complements the novel MRI methods for Alzheimer’s imaging featured in this annual meeting and describes how imaging can be combined with basic
neuroscience techniques to inform our understanding of AD. Invited speakers, several with primary background outside of imaging, will describe cutting-edge neuroscience techniques and the opportunities and challenges of their synthesis with MRI. Specifically, electron-level structural deposits (by electron paramagnetic resonance and pathology) and brain-wide functional network changes including the hippocampus (by
optogenetics fMRI) in AD will be related to MRI. Translation of molecular imaging from animal models to human clinical trials and how to maximize the value of non-invasive MRI will also be discussed.

Target Audience
Imaging scientists and clinicians with interest in dementia and in learning to synthesize basic neuroscience and molecular techniques with imaging.

Educational Objectives
As a result of attending this course, participants should be able to:
- Relate MRI findings to structural observations by pathology and electron paramagnetic resonance and to functional observations by PET in models of Alzheimer’s disease; 
- Discuss how new biological findings about the Alzheimer’s disease process can be informed by observations at multiple scales and different model systems; and
- Recognize technical challenges in multi-scale and multi-modal imaging studies and how to overcome them.