Edinburgh Napier University

  Neuroimaging is used in basic clinical research for diagnostic purposes, or using dementia as a paradigm for local brain lesions to examine normal and disturbed cognitive performance and brain function in parallel. This chapter prevents a summary of each of these approaches. Dementia is the global and acquired impairment of mental function and is a major health problem, particularly in the elderly. Its most common forms with substantial imaging data are dementia of the Alzheimer's type (AD), frontotemporal dementia, vascular dementia, and Lewy body dementia. The most commonly used imaging modalities are magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and emission tomography (ET) in their various forms. Neuropsychological function is specifically correlated with particularly functional imaging data, such as brain perfusion and metabolism measures. Combining functional imaging with neuropsychological techniques can help researchers and clinicians to identify regions associated with particular cognitive functions essential for performing a given cognitive task. Imaging of brain receptors are importantly used to explore the distribution of amyloid, cholinergic, and dopaminergic receptors in patients, thus contributing to the in vivo pharmacology and potentially to the treatment of the dementias.