HAI Book 2025 - Flipbook - Page 452
Maboudian, Samira
Tau-related cortical thinning is concentrated in sulcal depths
Samira Maboudian1,2, Corrina Fonseca1,2, Yishu Chao1,2, Duygu Tosun3, Lea Grinberg4,5, Kevin
Weiner1,2,6, William Jagust1,2,7
1
Department of Neuroscience, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, US
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, US
3
Department of Radiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, US
4
Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, US
5
Weill Institute for Neurosciences Memory and Aging Center, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco,
CA, US
6
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, US
7
Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, US
2
Background: Prior studies suggest sulci are unique markers of age- and Alzheimer9s disease (AD)-related
morphological changes, but the pattern of regional vulnerability to tau pathology is incompletely understood. We
performed this study to determine whether tau-related atrophy preferentially affects sulci and specifically the
deepest areas (sulcal pits), which are hypothesized connectivity hubs.
Methods: We used MRI, amyloid and tau (FTP) PET scans from ADNI participants: 94 AD, 113 A´+ MCI, 468
cognitively normal (166 A´+). Correlation between vertex-wise cortical thickness and whole-brain tau SUVR was
performed using FreeSurfer9s GLM pipeline, generating an ROI of significant clusters (
